Open Letter to OmniGroup About the iOS 7 Redesign of OmniFocus for iPhone
Dear OmniGroup Designers & Developers,
I’ve been a huge fan of OmniFocus, both Mac and iOS, for years. You guys helped me graduate college, become an ICU nurse, start a family, and change careers to become an indie iOS developer.
I’m writing to say that I’m very disappointed by the iOS 7 redesign of OmniFocus for iPhone. I’ve been using it since it came out, hoping that I would adjust to it, but it just hasn’t happened. Instead, I’m often reverting to a plain text list in a note-taking app for quick notes about the day’s tasks. I’m only using OmniFocus on my Mac now.
I’m not complaining about the flatness of the iOS redesign. Go with the current, by all means.
Instead, I’m disappointed by the underwhelming airiness of the whole app. It is excessively understated to the point of being hard to use. Navigation looks indistinguishable from content. I have trouble seeing the logical hierarchy of information. My fingers hesitate before tapping anything because I’m never entirely sure that I’m tapping the right thing. The inconsistent use of transition animations — some are standard push/pop transitions, others are the custom vertical split — act like speed bumps, preventing the use of muscle memory. The light weight fonts feel fragile and make quick, accurate reading almost impossible.
In short, the new design slows me down. I can’t build safe muscle memories. I can’t quickly navigate the app without constant tension. The design is driving me away from OmniFocus, and I don’t want that to happen.
Here’s what I wish you would change, at a minimum:
Consistent Navigation. Use one, consistent navigation paradigm throughout the app, even if it’s just the standard UIKit push/pop transition. Help me build power-user reflexes that speed up my work.
Distinguish Navigation From Content. Make navigation tonally distinct from content. I suggest using white text on a solid color background for toolbars and nav bars, and dark text on a white background for content. You could even use context-specific background colors for the navigation bars. The color cues from the dashboard screen would be even more resonant this way.
Use Readable Fonts. Don’t use light weight fonts. Don’t rely on the Settings.app text accessibility preferences, either, because what looks good in OmniFocus might look bad in another app. Make the out-of-the-box fonts easy to read.
Make the App Logically Obvious At A Glance. Short of jumping into Photoshop myself and showing you what I mean, I will say this: the task editing screen should be redesigned with a more obvious logical hierarchy. The current design’s closest analog from the real world is a tax form: a dizzying grid of equally-important boxes. The task editing screen is complex for a good reason. All the features are necessary. Rather than hide the complexity with understated controls, take the opposite approach. Make them easily understood even at a glance. The tabs should look like tabs if that’s how they function. A good test would be to see how accurately a new user remembers the content of a task after being shown the screen for a brief interval, say 2-3 seconds.
Thanks for all your hard work over the years. I entrust so much of my life to your software. I want to continue to be a loyal customer and fan.
Cheers,
Jared Sinclair | @jaredsinclair
The Indie Ocean
My finger-to-the-wind says that apps and services aiming for mainstream consumer appeal, which were already impossibly hard, are only going to get harder in the coming years. There’s too much noise, and attention is fleeting. Any company that hasn’t started by now has already lost.
But on the other hand, iOS is a rapidly-maturing operating system. It’s officially seven years old today. The latest round of iPads and iPhones have practically removed all hardware barriers limiting what software can do.
In other words, while the tides of attention-based, multi-million-dollar startups churn red with the blood of all the contenders, I think there’s a vast blue ocean waiting for independent developers to make prosumer and pro software. I look at an app like Editorial by Ole Zorn and think, “My god, that’s where the rest of us should be going.”
Mass market, VC-funded companies can’t ship those kinds of apps. Apple’s apps will never be all things to all customers, either. But many people are still going to need advanced tools to get through their day-to-day lives. Not just writers, but first grade teachers, speech-language pathologists, youth pastors, session guitarists, ICU nurses — everyone.
I think that success will come to folks who can figure out how to ship “maximum viable products” on day one, without venture funding and without going bankrupt in the process, apps that are carefully designed and built to solve real problems for real people.
Unread App Status Report
The Polar Vortex of 2014 has been a boon for Unread. Icy midwestern weather trapped me indoors and blurred the week into one, uninterrupted, very productive Work Day. I cleared the last must-have feature from the Version 1.0 todo list a few days ago. Only a few stepping stones remain between here and App Store submission. If you have any questions not answered below, feel free to ask me.
Fixes and Polishing
The private beta has been a relief. The testers have sent fantastic notes and bug reports. Most of their concerns are fixed and ready to ship. Fresh eyes are indispensable after you’ve spent six straight months staring at the same screens. The app is on feature lockdown from now on: no new features until after App Store submission. I’m obsessively polishing the smaller details. The best news I can give you is that the testers are really enjoying the app. I hope you will, too.
Feedly Integration
Technically, I’ve integrated Feedly into Unread already, but I only have access to the development sandbox. I’ve requested access to the production environment so that any Feedly user can sign in with Unread. If for some reason Unread is not approved for production access, then I will submit Version 1.0 without Feedly, trying again later. I requested access very recently, however, so I’m confident that Feedly integration will be in the 1.0. This process may end up pushing back the 1.0 several weeks. Unread also works with FeedWrangler (which I use personally) and Feedbin.
App Submission Collateral
I need to assemble the items required by the App Store, the usual bric-a-brac: screenshots, an app description, et cetera. Easy stuff.
Pricing Announcement
I’ve finally chosen a price: Unread will be available at an introductory price of $2.99, for a limited time. I know the tides have turned in favor of freemium pricing models, but those models work best for:
- Apps that connect to their own proprietary services. Unread connects to other companies’ services. There are no server-side features of my own that I could charge for.
- Games with consumable purchases. I could charge you $0.99 cents for every article you read or share, but I don’t think I could stomach the one-star reviews.
I considered using the free-with-pro-upgrade model we use in Riposte, but it doesn’t make sense for an RSS reader. Riposte’s biggest challenge is drawing customers to App.net, which has a much smaller network of users.1 RSS, while not as popular as it once was, is an established medium with plenty of existing users. Hopefully there’s a good number of them who aren’t afraid to spend a few bucks on a new app — especially one that tries very hard to be a fresh take on an old idea.
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App.net also has the Developer Incentive Program, which is a nice bonus. ↩
Lengthen Your Line — Why I Oppose Software Patents
Tonight iA announced that they will drop their controversial patent application for the “Syntax Control” feature of Writer Pro. Upon learning of the surprising good news, I was reminded of an anecdote from Zen in the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams.
Hyams, a journalist and a devoted martial arts student, compiled the book from unexpected life lessons he learned while on the mat. Despite its short length, it is rich with practical wisdom. It’s not a book about feats of the body, but a work of deep gratitude for the teachers who helped him become a happier person (I cannot recommend this book enough; it’s wonderful).
This is one of my favorite stories:
I will remember one of my initial sessions at [Ken Parker’s] dojo in Los Angeles where I was practising kumite (sparring) with a more skillful opponent. To make up for my lack of knowledge and experience, I tried deceptive, tricky moves that were readily countered. I was outclassed, and Parker watched me get roundly trounced.
When the match was over I was dejected. Parker invited me into his small office; a small sparsely furnished room with only a scarred desk and battered chairs.
"Why are you so upset?" he asked.
"Because I couldn’t score."
Parker got up from behind the desk and with a piece of chalk drew a line on the floor about five feet long.
"How can you make this line shorter?" he asked.
I studied the line and gave him several answers, including cutting the line in many pieces. He shook his head and drew a second line, longer than the first.
"Now how does the first line look?"
"Shorter," I said.
Parker nodded. “It is always better to improve and strengthen your own line or knowledge than to try and cut your opponent’s line.” He accompanied me to the door and added, “Think about what I have just said.”
Software developers: lengthen your line.
Pull-To-Do-Action
Loren Brichter, inventor of the now ubiquitous pull-to-refresh control, interviewed in an article by Fast Company called “Why the Pull-to-Refresh Gesture Must Die”:
Brichter, however, feels that it’s high time his gesture evolves. “The fact that people still call it ‘pull-to-refresh’ bothers me—using it just for refreshing is limiting and makes it obsolete,” he says. “I like the idea of ‘pull-to-do-action.’”
If you like the sound of that, you’re gonna love Unread.