Jorge as little as I feel qualified to discuss things like UI design and bug prioritization, I feel even less that I have anything remotely informed to say about how to run an app-business. So I’m keeping out of the cashflow convo ; )
Jay
I’ve been involved in enough volunteer activities (that’s what beta fundamentally is) to know there’s only so much you can do to organize volunteers. It’s just one notch down from herding actual kittens, and when it’s online volunteers, well, that doesn’t help. I also have seen that you only really need the barest amount of organization … and clear instructions. I wasn’t imagining extensive management here, just some structure that helps us all pull in the same direction. I won’t venture how to actually do this because that’s best left to the person doing the actual work.
The features I wouldn’t mind seeing gone are probably different from what’s smartest to remove. Furthermore, I don’t really want to see any of them go for good, since I see value in nearly all of them. There is one I do think can go forever, and that’s Archive.
It’s confusing, even for experienced users. I don’t believe this level of “double-completing” is expected by users nor offered by competitors. Because of how it works, it is very easy to accidentally delete archived items between non-archived items via multi-select in a non-archive Pane; that’s the opposite of “archive”! I also can’t recall hearing anybody mention actually using it. I’m pretty sure it could be re-tooled into a way of capturing completed instances of repeaters, and people do want that. Perhaps it can just be stripped-back or hidden for later? Or not. Good riddance! The only thing that makes sense to me to be Archived would be an entire Document - to remove it from display in the Overview Drawer without destroying it.
I will attempt to do the rest of this by the numbers. I keep a personal issue-tracker for Legend; I do not populate it from other’s posts here (sorry y’all), just my gripes. I tag it by feature and differentiate between Bugs and Requests. I have not tidied up, so many items are invalid due to no repro, lots of dupes, and plenty of already-fixed-but-I-didn’t-mark-its. It contains 963 items. Even if you cut that in half, it’s clear: I’m a nitpicker! Be glad you don’t live with me. That said, I think we can extract some helpful info from it:
- When I group-by “feature” and sort the groups by # items, the top 10 Bugs are in:
groupby panes (ironic); filters; mobile, calendar, mirrors, notes, ux*, tags, hotkeys, links
- Same Pane, top 10 Requests are in:
ux*, filters, group-by panes, hotkeys, outline, boards, calendar, settings, mobile.
- That overlaps on 6 items: groupBy, filters, mobile, calendar, ux, hotkeys.
- These, then, are the features responsible for both the largest share of the bug load and the most work needed to bring features up to polish (according to me). Meaning they would be the most impactful to cut.
My thoughts on them:
- GroupBy Panes, I use the absolute crap out of – and would use even more if the bugs were less. I use them both in processing items and to serve up my work queue; if they go away I’ll have to fully retool the workflows I’ve spent years refining. I would be very very sad, and less productive, but I’d still be here. I don’t get the impression a lot of other folks are using them – very possibly because their bugs are sneaky and disorienting which makes them landmines for new users. If they were better-behaved I think people would fall over themselves to use them; they take Legend two full levels beyond the competition in what they enable you to do.
- Filters are part of Legend’s core value; they have to stay!
- Mobile is essentially non-negotiable, for marketability.
- Calendar (only the Pane type, not the date tags themselves), I’m pretty sure, is used by many. I can personally get by without it but don’t want to see it go. It’s a top-level Pane type for a reason.
- UX, to me, is a measure of how good the app feels to use. I don’t like the idea of leaving it behind but honestly I feel like I’m the only one most of this stuff bothers, so I guess these are pretty low priority issues. And they’re not really a “feature” anyway so it’s not so much cutting as it is ignoring them.
- Hotkeys…honestly I think this is only on the list because I didn’t check off a large raft of fixes Jay made way back in the day. The real number definitely isn’t zero but certainly this one isn’t top-10.
So I guess my list is:
- Archive
- Group-By Panes
- UX issues (continue to ignore)
- Maybe Calendar, but ideally not
For Group-By Panes: I plead to keep the good, remove the bad.
- KEEP: Tag, and Priority are reliable enough to use for most things; contact probably is, too (I don’t use it). Agenda has flaws, but is priceless. I assert that it isn’t even a “group by” pane in the first place; it is entirely distinct from the other GB types in layout and display. It really should be a top-level Pane type. I think it used to be, years ago?
- MAYBE: Heading and Project generally work okay, but don’t add as much as tag and priority (it’s hard to tell the difference between a GroupBy Heading Pane and one that’s just filtered on headings), and set up some truly wacky pane-options (“projects anywhere in hierarchy”). They are also extra-confusing because of indentation and prefixes. I know some folks are using ’em, though!
- REMOVE: The four Date-based panes are super hard to get good results with. Maybe impossible. Date appears to be identical to Agenda, including having an “overdue” section which at the very least a generic “group-by-date” pane would not have. The other three have plenty of utility but have some really challenging misbehaviors. I also just don’t hear people talking about these. I would love to see them back someday, though, with fixes.
I might also throw links and mirrors under the bus. I use both – mirrors mostly – but only because I’ve learned what you can and can’t do with them. They could be so much more, and they still bite me now and then. Both features are very valuable and there are competitors with analogues…but in Legend they are buggy and confusing AF when they act up. There are also a whole lot of bugs that have both the #mirrors tag AND #groupby tag. Those two features do not play well together. I’d rather lose mirrors than groupbys.
About Email
I don’t use email Panes anymore. The Gmail audit thing happened around the time I started working with several non-gmail accounts so I moved to Mailbird to retain a connection. Email is what originally brought me to Legend and I hope one day the OG style of drag-n-drop comes back; the MB integration does what I need only because I don’t create a lot of items with email objects in them. Recently the sync to the instance of Legend inside MailBird is quite broken, and that does slow me down sometimes…but I can get by without it. I’ve always felt the Mailbird integration was the best solution to the Google API problem…but it doesn’t seem like that idea got much traction with other Legend users.
I actually came to MailBird because of Legend and ended up liking it on it’s own, it’s a solid offering and I’m sad the devs aren’t being responsive to Jay because I really don’t want to burn time shopping for and learning a new email app out of spite ; )
And there you have it: another wall of text! Did you miss me?
'* I use the “ux” tag to mean things that aren’t functionally wrong or harmful, but just kinda piss you off. Unexpected responses to input; wonky workflows with excessive clicking; inconsistent behaviors. Frictions to productivity. Because…it’s a productivity app, right?
