Category Archives: Usability

Posts related to product design, user experience and usability

Our new version: even better integration with Google Drive, and even better tablet support

Technology, Usability

Our next release is mostly about improving our Google Drive integration: we are making it a lot easier for you to manage your Google Docs from within Kerika itself, so that your content has a very useful “contextual layer” on top! Here are some of the improvements we be rolling out this weekend:

  • The file organization inside your Google Drive will be a lot more streamlined: a single, top-level folder called “Kerika.com” will have subfolders for each account to which you have access.
  • Better synching between Google Drive and your Kerika projects:
    • If you rename a file that’s attached to a Kerika card, that new name will show up in your Google Drive as well.
    • If you rename a file in Google Drive, that new name will show up in your Kerika cards.
    • If you delete a file that’s attached to a Kerika card, that file will get moved to the Trash in your Google Drive as well.
    • File sharing within your Google Drive will be done at the Kerika project folder level, which means faster performance and a cleaner interface.
    • Duplication of file folders will be eliminated.
  • Content that is attached to cards can be renamed easily: if you rename a file that you attached to a card, this new name will show up in your Google Drive as well, and you will be able to easily rename Web links as well.

We are also improving the Kerika experience on iPads and cellphones: as before, you can access Kerika right from the Safari browser (or Chrome, if you prefer), without having to download any special apps, and we are adding:

  • Better support for “double-tapping”, similar to doing a double click on a desktop.
  • Better support for phones.
  • Improved performance.

General improvements to the user interface will include:

  • A new set of tutorial videos, all under 2 minutes in length, to help you get more out of Kerika.
  • Cut-and-paste of entire projects.
  • Any URLs that are referenced inside cards or on chat messages will appear as clickable links.
  • Content inside chat messages can be easily copied.
  • A cleaner way to customize the workflow for your project.
  • A cleaner layout of icons on cards.
  • Some cool animation effects that make it easier to understand how canvases work, particularly if your projects contain multi-layered canvases (where one canvas contains several others).
  • A new to mark cards as “Needs rework”.

And, a final note: this version has taken quite a bit longer (4+ weeks) that our previous versions, largely because we allowed “feature creep” to happen… We kept adding usability tweaks to the release, particularly with respect to the iPad experience, and that chewed up a whole week. We need to guard more closely against feature creep for our next release.

Coming up: we are adding tagging as a new feature, which will make it easier to create quick filtered views of large projects!

The best lines from Tim Cook’s Q&A at Goldman Sachs Conference

Technology, Usability

The transcript at the Wall Street Journal is extensive, and makes for great reading. Here are some of our favorite bits:

On whether Apple is too frugal:

My definition of a depression-era mentality wouldn’t be of a company investing a pair of tens over two years. [“tens” refers to $10 billion.]

On Einhorn’s lawsuit and Apple’s Proposal 2:

You’re not gonna see us do campaign mailing, you’re not gonna see a “yes on 2” in my front yard. This is a waste of shareholder money, it’s a distraction, and it’s not a seminal issue for Apple.

On innovation:

If there was a formula, a lot of companies would have bought their ability to innovate…

Consumers want an elegant experience where the technology flows to the background

These skills, this isn’t something you can just go write a check for. This is decades of experience

On specs:

Do you know the speed of an AX processor? You probably don’t. Does it matter? You want a fantastic experience

On iPad market share:

I have no idea what market share is, we’re the only company that really reports the units we sell.

On cannibalization:

I think if a company ever begins to use cannibalization as a primary or even a major factor of what products to go to, it’s the beginning of the end.

On iPad Mini:

I think this is gonna be the mother of all markets.

On the value of Apple Stores:

The tablet was ingrained in their mind as this heavy thing the Hertz guy held. But our store is the place to go and discover and try it out and see what it can do.

On being a good corporate citizen:

I’m very proud that we’re out front, that we have a spine on supply responsibility.

 

 

Creating a picture board as an example of a Whiteboard project

Usability

Here’s a really great example of how you can easily create rich Web pages using Kerika:

Example of a Whiteboard project
Example of a Whiteboard project

This page was created in just minutes, and can be changed in real-time. The page is an example of Kerika’s Whiteboard projects, being used by the Seattle chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE).

This page is also a great example of you can create pages within pages: just click on the “Parking Directions” shape, and you get taken to another page that’s organized as a picture board:

Example of a picture board
Example of a picture board

Publishing these web pages is easy and instantaneous: just take the URL of your Kerika project page, and replace the “/m/” in the middle with “/c/” and you will have a real-time Web page that anyone can access, from anywhere, even if they don’t use the Kerika software.

(In this example, the project page is at kerika.com/m/BSxW, and the published page is at kerika.com/c/BSxW)

Want to learn more about how to create these great canvases? Check out this video.

A new pricing scheme, and better controls for your account

Usability

Our latest version includes a bunch of usability improvements, as usual, but the biggest changes are to the billing mechanism and account management:

  • Billing: we have updated and simplified our pricing: users told us that the old multi-level pricing was a little complicated, so we have a simpler offer of $10 per user per month for Professional users.
    • You can still start off with a free Standard Account which lets you share your projects with two other people, and if your team is small enough — or you are using Kerika for personal task management only where you don’t have a need to share your projects with others — you will be able to stay with the free Account.
    • Once your account team becomes larger, you can upgrade to a paid Professional Account which will let you add as many users as you like, at a flat rate of $10 per user per month.
    • If you are working on an academic or nonprofit project, you can request free service which lets you have a team of up to 10 people.
    • Billing is done on an annual basis (our users told us that was preferable to monthly renewals, since it was easier for businesses to make annual decisions than to repeatedly make monthly approvals), and you can cancel or reduce your subscription at any time and get a prorated refund.
  • Account Management: it’s easier now to see all the users who are part of your account, and to remove someone from all your projects.
Easier to manage your account
Easier to manage your account

 

  • We made it easier to use templates when setting up new projects: now, you can easily browse your personal library of process templates, templates created by coworkers, and templates provided by Kerika and easily set up a new project.
  • Even better support for distributed teams: we made a bunch of usability tweaks to the notifications you get when coworkers make changes.
  • We have added more content to our website and generally improved its layout. Over the coming days we will be adding more tutorial videos, in addition to the one we already have on how to use Kerika’s unique real-time collaboration canvases.
  • And, speaking of the canvas, we have added some cool animation effects that will help you navigate when you have canvases nested inside each other!

Our thanks to everyone who has been giving us feedback!

Next up: Kerika will be available from the Google Apps Marketplace and the Chrome Web Store.

 

Coming up: a “unified inbox” view of all your projects

Usability

We should be wrapping up yet another new version of Kerika in the next few days: we have been focusing on how to make it easier for people to get to all of their projects, across all the accounts they are working in.

Some quick background: Kerika lets you create projects in your own account, of course, but also in the accounts of other people who have added you to their project teams. This means that over time you can end up creating, and working on, projects that are owned by several different accounts. Our users have asked for this to be improved in two ways:

  • Users want to make sure they are creating projects in the right accounts, so people want to get a little reminder of which account is being used, each time they create a new project.
  • Users want fast access to all of their projects, across all of their accounts.

Here’s what we are doing to help: first, make it clear to you which account is being used to create your new project. The dialog for creating a new project will look like this:

New Project dialog

So, right up front you can see the name of the account you will be creating your new project in, and the face of the account owner. If you want to create your project in a different account, you can switch right on this dialog with one easy action.

The second big change is to create what we call a “unified inbox” view of all your projects, similar to how email clients work that let you see all your emails in one place, across all your accounts.

When you are looking at your projects, the “My Projects” link will show you all your projects, across all your accounts:

Unified Inbox

Just below the “My Projects” link are all the accounts that you have access to, starting with your own (which is always called “My Account”), and followed by the accounts that have projects that were updated most recently. This makes it easier for you to access not just all your projects, but also the accounts that are most active.

This improvement, like everything else we have done, has been driven by valuable user feedback! Next up, once we get this version wrapped up, is simpler billing system and integration with the Google Apps Marketplace and the Google Chrome Web Store.

Improved integration with Google Drive, faster performance, and full iPad support

Usability

Along with our best wishes for this holiday season, we have a small present to put under the tree as well: a new version of Kerika will be available on Christmas Day! This new version will come with:

  • Improved integration with Google Drive: now, you will be able share any kind of files, including music, videos, Flash, and other binary data, simply by adding them to your project cards or canvases. (When you log into Kerika again, you will be asked to reauthorize Kerika’s access to your Google Apps,)
  • Improved performance: projects should load at least twice as fast as they did before, making it a lot easier to use Kerika in coffee shops and other places with unreliable WiFi.
  • Full, fun iPad support: you will be able to access your Kerika projects using the Safari or Chrome browser on your tablet (no need to download any apps).
  • Better support for visitors: you can give project stakeholders (like your clients, for example) read-only access to your projects. They will be able to view everything in your projects except for your chat, which will remain private to the team members.

There are also usability tweaks:

  • Attachments can now be opened with a single click.
  • The “Move” action can now be found in the menu at the top of the columns.

What we are working on next:

  • A consolidated view of all your projects, similar in concept to the “unified inbox” you find on your smartphone.
  • Easier ways to manage your account, and integration with the Google Apps Marketplace and the Chrome Web Store.
  • Work estimation, work logging, and exporting of project data.

Thanks again for all your support: the very encouraging feedback we have been getting from our users continues to fuel our efforts!

Giving real thanks, this Thanksgiving

Kerika, Technology, Usability

This Thanksgiving holiday, we have good cause to be grateful to all the folks who gave us detailed feedback on our new task management software, and helped us identify about 25 different improvements that we plan to make over the next week covering areas such as:

  • Eliminating any confusion that might exist regarding project privacy;
  • Making it easier to edit card titles;
  • Making it easier to chat on individual cards;
  • Improving the emails that are sent when people are added or removed from projects;
  • Improving the overall performance, by at least by 50%;
  • Simplifying the experience for new users;
  • Simplifying the use of canvases and whiteboards;
  • Adding helpful hints throughout the product; and
  • Eliminating references to “Kanban” which some people find confusing (without eliminating any functionality).

We will be updating Kerika next week, and will continue to release new versions every two weeks, and over the next month we plan to market and publicize the software more.

Task management comes to Kerika

Kerika, Technology, Usability

At long last, task management comes to Kerika!

We are launching a brand-new version of Kerika this weekend: the fruits of over 8 months of intense research and design of the only taskboard that’s designed specially for distributed teams. There’s a short video that we urge you to watch: it provides a good overview of Kerika’s new capabilities:

  • You can organize your work using cards on a virtual task board: the interface is easy to understand and delightful to use.
  • Each card can contain details of the work, and, of course, you can add content from your laptop or the Web to each card.
  • Each card can be assigned to one or more people from your project team: Kerika lets you see at a glance who is working on what.
  • Chat is integrated directly with your work: you can send messages that are attached to your cards, or the entire taskboard.
  • You can get started with one of our standard project templates, or create your own process templates to reflect your organization’s best practices and proprietary methodologies.
  • Kerika’s unique whiteboard capabilities are integrated with the new task management: you can add a canvas to each card for sharing ideas, and everything updates in real-time as usual.
  • And our special focus continues to be the challenges faced by teams that are distributed over different locations — it could be that you are working with people offshore, or simply working from home: Kerika makes it easy for you to see, at a glance, exactly what’s changed on each work item in each project.

As usual, we look forward to your feedback! (Contact us by email.)

A new user interface, with much improved usability

Kerika, Technology, Usability

We are launching a brand-new version of Kerika, with a completely reworked user interface and a ton of new features including support for iPads and other full-sized tablets.

The new UI is different enough that we have put together a 2-minute video that we recommend you watch before you sign in next; it will really help you get the most out of the new software. The interface is new, but all your old projects and data are all intact!

The new interface is part of a larger transformation we are undertaking that will add project management capabilities to our existing collaboration features: we want to provide support for Kanban-style projects, Agile/Scrum projects, and customized workflows. We have finished designing the new features and if you would be willing to take a look at our mockups and give us your opinion, it would be greatly appreciated!

Meanwhile, please enjoy the new version, particularly if you have an iPad or other full-sized tablet. To access Kerika on your tablet, just log into the kerika.com site using your tablet’s browser: there is no need to download any app because we have rebuilt the user interface to work just fine inside your tablet’s browser.

Kerika isn’t written in Indonesian. (And Google Docs isn’t in Vietnamese either…)

Ephemera, Technology, Usability

An odd problem that we cannot quite figure out: every once in a while Google’s Chrome browser will tell the user that the application is written in Indonesian, and then offer to do a translation.

We cannot figure out what’s going on with this: all of the code is written in Javascript and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), so why would Chrome consider it to be an Indonesian page?

The problem must lie with Google Chrome itself: now, we are noticing that it will sometimes report that Google Docs is written in Vietnamese, as this screenshot shows!