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Ask HN: Feedback on Thymer - a GTD/project management app for teams

36 pointsjd49 comments

It has been a while since I last talked about Thymer (www.thymer.com). Based on the feedback we got from our first users we went back to stealth mode and we've given the interface a major overhaul. It's become a one-page-design where all your time-tracking, planning and scheduling happens on a single page. We've noticed that almost all existing time-tracking software either has a terrible interface or doesn't even match the features of pen-and-paper time-trackers. We think our interface turned out pretty well, and it might suit your taste too.

We just entered private beta, so, if you have a few minutes, try it out (key for HN users: NOPROCRAST). Needless to say, we want to know what you think. Don't hold back :)

www.thymer.com

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This is the most intuitive scheduling app I've ever used. The way that you just hover over everything and get to see what different features do without committing to anything allows me to explore your app without much fuss.

Feature requests:

1.) When I add a task, sometimes I'd like to add a really detailed description (or any description for that matter) (i.e. a project spec) and I'd like the ability to do that. The ability to bold, italicize, change font size and format, etc, would be helpful in descriptions.

2.) Attachments. I want to be able to attach files to my tasks.

3.) Keep the above features out of the way. Most of the time I won't need them, but when I do, I really need them.

EDIT: 4.) Just realized that the projects aren't hierarchical. I expected them to be, and it doesn't allow me to be super organized for more complex projects/tasks. An example of this might be Work>Websites>ClientA and another might be Life>Exercise or Life>Clean-Up.

If I think of more, I'll let you know. Nice job so far.

I'm glad you like the way we try to hide features until you need it, and some good points, thanks!

1 - we use the comments ("discuss") section for this as it also allows for all this formatting, but it might be nice to bring this to descriptions as well

2 - Yep, we also need those. Attaching files is part of a bigger problem - managing, indexing, finding and sharing digital documents. Uploading and finding back attachments can be really frustrating. We're thinking about solving that problem in a more fundamental way, while keeping it really simple to use.

3 - We want to keep the design 'clean'. the interface should not interfere or distract. we also want to continue on this line when adding new features.

4 - Someone else also commented on this, going to look into that.

Right now our priority is fixing all the glitches but we're definitely going to look into this. Thanks.

http://www.thymer.com, for people using browsers without copy-paste features ;)

Maybe create an API so I can update this from my phone(via app) or maybe allow SMS updating. Mobile use is crucial for me, heck even allowing emails to create new todos/projects would be nice.

Adding mobile capabilities would be a game changer for me. I'd sign-up for a year and pay you for it if you built a mobile interface and/or sms interface. I'd be willing to pay $10/month if this made scheduling my life as easy as it looks like it could and it included all the free SMS I wanted to send for use in scheduling tasks via mobile.

A phone version is planned - but we've discovered that most phone browsers are really terrible. Are you looking for an iPhone web version, or for a jar version (like google did for gmail/google maps)? Or do you think something that uses Opera Mobile/Mini would be good enough?

It's pretty hard to get reliable worldwide sms delivery, but -- sms for the USA and Europe we can do, I think.

Just for another data point. I purchased the $25 Remember the milk subscription just so I could get the iPhone access. If you made this work with the iPhone I think you will create market share.

Maybe you could make it free for people unless they want the advanced features. The features could be sms/email notifications, more projects than x at a time, or whatever you might deem worth charging for. You will need to tweak the business model but so far the site looks clean and usable. Good job.

An iPhone interface and/or a generic smart phone interface (Android, WinMo, etc). Forget the lower end phones that don't support CSS, they aren't going to be in your demographic anyway.

A lot of times you can get away with a decent smart phone interface and just put a few meta tags in the head tag for the iPhone so that it looks slick for the iPhone too.

iPhone is fine since I have an Android.

Also choosing your own colors for projects would be nice :)

On your frontpage: there are some graphics under the video which frankly are too small to make out. You may as well drop them - maybe replace with a screenshot tour (I don't usually like watching videos because you can't skim through them).

Also on front page, your tag line ("For individuals ...") is too close to the word "planning" with a big gap underneath it. The tagline could be very much bigger and make better use of the available space.

Your signup page is a bit of an eyeful. I like the narrative on the fields, but maybe put the elements in a table with the narrative in a column on the left (in place of regular labels) and the fields on the right. However, thanks for guessing my timezone correctly (or maybe it was a lucky default ;) and letting me change the date format up-front.

The video is too long at 5 minutes. My (admittedly short) attention span ran out at 2 minutes. In fact, the first two minutes were enough to convince me to sign up based on the look and feel, etc. Someone I know who does marketing told me "give them just enough information to choose you over your competitors. Everything else is wasted." So less is more on the video front.

However, I did sign up and I like the look of the app itself. Judging from your help page, there's a lot to know so maybe you should make those pages into a PDF so people can print cheat-sheets? Looks like each section should fit nicely on an A4/letter page.

Sounds like I'm being critical but it looks like a great app and I wish you luck with it. I'll try to use it some more and post again.

You can click to enlarge the screenshots, but a tour might be a nice addition.

We're Dutch, so the timezone wasn't a lucky default ;) (i'll let you think about what time it is here in GMT+1 land :p), but I think in the end small things like the timezone-guessing help a lot.

Thank you for your other suggestions, and I'm glad you like it.

-- I think the "D" discussion icon is superfluous. What's the point of marking something for discussion? Why not just start a discussion?

-- The name did make me think there'd be live timing function. Unless the thing with the broken, blinking 00h00 is it.

-- Project naming is broken. You allow projects to be named with more than one word, but things break if you do that: you can't use @Project Name, and todos added to a multi-word–named project are saved incorrectly and only get tagged with the first word of the project, so they aren't added to the project at all.

-- The projects should not be listed with arrows between: they imply a hierarchy where there isn't one. Also the general design breaks with more than two realistically named projects: http://imgur.com/Q49W.jpg

Seriously, everyone should work with real examples. It takes time and mental effort to enter realistic data, but how else will you know how well your product works? And you'll be able to take much nicer looking screenshots that actually show what your product can handle rather than only hint at it and make me figure the rest out myself.

Thanks for your comments, this is really helpful!

- Good point, we used the 'D'-icon to show other team members that a discussion was needed before this task could be completed, a sort of specific 'waiting for'. Conversely it would also indicate when there was no discussion needed. We could make this more clear.

- The "broken blinking 00h00 thing" :) is indeed currently the only actual timer in the app. It counts hh:mm you're currently working on something. So it does time, but we know there's room for improvement there. The name Thymer also fits with the names of other products we're working on, we'll blog about that soon.

- You're right. Sorry it should be made more clear that the name it meant as a short tag (which you can type fast to assign tasks to it), whereas the description can be used to add additional information and a longer name.

- True, it's used as a separator with some nice visual touch, but I realize it implies some relationship. I'll look into it, thanks.

Good point about the real examples. That was actually the idea but the tag/description thing is obviously very confusing. It will be fixed.

[edit:layout]

When I tried to register, I got a timeout on <http://thymerdev.stunf.com/accounts/register/>:

"The server at thymerdev.stunf.com is taking too long to respond."

But when I tried again, it worked. Is your web server having trouble with load? If so, do you have plans for scaling?

Edit: yes, it definitely could use some more speed. It's decent, but just a little too laggy for my liking. That said, this is the first time tracking thingy I've seriously considered actually using. I wish you the best of luck, and my reasons for doing so are largely selfish: I want Thymer to be great.

If you're serving this from a machine in the Netherlands, that could be a problem for those of us in other continents. The perception of quickness is important, so this is probably something you should sort out soon and then launch.

The load is low and Thymer is on a fast server - but our hosting provider reports package-loss and higher latency for a users in our data center, so I hope this is only a temporary problem. Responses are instant here, so we thought it didn't affect us.

If it isn't we can always lease servers in the US, so even if the latency doesn't improve we'll figure something out. Thymer is instant for us, and it should be instant for everybody else. I doubt we'll get around to leasing servers in the US before we launch though -- so please bear with us.

And thanks for wishing us luck. We want Thymer to be great too -- creating passionate users and all that.

Thanks for sharing - I'm a GTD fan, and have implemented on both windows and OSX systems.. tried just about everything out there. I have also played with just about every piece of project management software that seems useful.

First, your interface is very nice, and mostly intuitive.

However, to me, I could never see using the application unless it integrated into my e-mail system. This is a minimum for actually using as part of my workflow. As a bonus, I usually configure my GTD systems to integrate with my calendar (ical and google cal).

A nice web app is interesting, but to me, and I expect most power users, GTD is about managing existing information (e-mail, calendars, folders, files, etc), not for creating meta-lists which indirectly and subjectively modify the information I need to deal with.

Yeah My entire company would like to use this service, id say as long as its 90% bug free, launch!

Thanks! Just making sure it's indeed 90% bug free now.

I like the registration page. But, it would be better if you could align the textfields.

I really like the idea and how easy it is to add tasks / manage them. Some feedback:

1. It's confusing to see the equivalent of two checkboxes on the left, one that is an icon and one that is an HTML checkbox. What is the difference?

2. In general, the icons could be a little more intuitive. I'm not sure what "D" means (discuss maybe? Then why is a discuss button also on the left?

3. Going to a new page to discuss / comment is kind of annoying. I'd prefer something like FriendFeed-style inline commenting.

Good luck and thanks for the invite!

Glad you like it.

1. It is a little confusing, now you mention it. The difference is that the big check box on the left marks a task a done, and the other (small) checkbox is used to select a bunch of tasks so you can do bulk actions. At this point there is only bulk-complete, but adding tags by bulk is something you want to relatively often, so that's why we can't really get rid of the second check box. On the other hand, it is weird to have two check boxes for every todo, so we'll have to think of something.

2. Correct, D is discuss. The D button can be toggled so other people can see the todo should be discussed first. Suppose I want to work on a feature, and Wim realizes that it won't work because of X, he can click the 'D' button and add a comment. When I then go to my task list I see the 'D', I check the comments and realize what's wrong. We found that a simple flag that says "hey - wait a second" is a really effective way to indicate a possible problem.

3. Very annoying. We wanted to fix it, but we couldn't justify waiting any longer with the beta.

Some quick notes on a app that I think I will use in the future to manage the todos for our small firm (just need to convince the CEO/wife :-)

1. Being a swede I like the date format YYYY-MM-DD

2. The controls for changing the projects (private, completed etc.) on the bottom feels unconnected to the project. Perhaps you should place them just below the project bar or to the right of it.

3. The term changelog feels like programmer talk, perhaps you should use reports or history

Another thing: I created a team member for testing purposes, now I'm stuck with "him", it should be possible to: * remove accounts * remove a member form the team * be member of more then one team

Most likely something you have under way but wanted to add a quick note

Tack. Creating and managing teams is indeed still too primitive now, we're planning on fixing all that during the beta. Good point about the date formats, it's on my list.

Just this morning I was bemoaning my lack of a simple todo list. I've played with most of the big names, RTM, Tadalist, etc. but this one looks, at least initially, to be much closer to what I need. I'm going to get my girlfriend / brain on it later hopefully to see if we can begin using it for coordination.

I love the plain text entry, reminds me of another of my favorite web apps, 30boxes.com. The calendar I use which manages my entire life :)

I think we know exactly how you feel. I've spent countless hours trying and installing different applications, and they ultimately all disappointed.

Thymer is by no means finished -- but we think it shows promise. If you want to invite your girlfriend to Thymer create an account and team for her via the "settings" link in the upper right corner. It's not intuitive -- I know, this will be fixed in the near future.

It may not be immediately intuitive, but it is simple to find and easy to understand. Overall I am enjoying the system, will continue to explore and give feedback as I work with it.

How do I delete or rename projects? I can't find an interface for that anywhere.

When I wanted to edit tasks, I tried double-clicking on them. This did nothing. You can detect double-clicking with the dblclick event, and I think that would make things a bit more intuitive.

1. Projects cannot be deleted at this point -- only completed (closed). This is bad, I admit, we're going to fix it.

2. Double-click for edit - yes, absolutely. It's completely obvious now you mention it.

Personally, I am not sure why you're in a private beta. Just launch it and iterate as fast as you can.

We definitely need to release as soon as possible, the private-beta is really just to make sure there aren't any really big problems we've missed. And I suppose it's partially just launch-anxiety :). Flipping the switch with a product that isn't perfect (sure, it never will) is always hard; but we're definitely not going to stay in private beta for long.

a few bugs I noticed

If I type in @today twice (because it didn't move it to the "today" section), it assigns it to a user called today (I believe, at least that's the same visual language as when I assigned a task to another team member).

Is it possible to access my google calendar? My biz team member probably won't use this, but we share a google calendar. Would be nice to be able to manipulate it through your interface.

Overall, very nice. I'm very, very cheap so I'm not sure what price point I would be ok with, but it's still very impressive. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the bug reports.

1. We'll fix the @today @today bug. Dropping the second today is probably the right behavior.

2. No google calendar plugin yet, but we plan to do a lot with extensibility. Since I use google calendar myself it a plugin is on the todo-list.

We haven't decided on pricing yet - but there should be a plan for everybody.

It would be nice if you would overlay the help image over the input box instead of forcing me to go to a non-functional page to see it. I don't want to have to "go back" to use what I learned.

Great start. A bug:

1. Create a project with a space in its name "project name"

2. Add a task to that project and only the first word is tagged as @project

autocomplete on the project name would be a nice feature. something like @pro and then it brings up a list of projects that start with pro. You could also do the autocomplete of the other interesting things such as team members and time.

One complaint I hear all the time from people I have worked with is the lack of autocomplete features so this would be a big win for your usability.

A bug would be I can add items to projects but they don't show up in the project. I can find them in the all tab but not the project they belong in.

Any plans on an iPhone app soon ?

This would be the "make or break " feature for me.

(I have signed up and am using the app. Great work !)

Glad you like Thymer!

We definitely want to build an iPhone app, but it is a lot of work to make, so we're probably first going to iron out the flaws in this version and then release version 1.

I love this app already.

Guys, if you want to do a Japanese cell phones version, give me a holler. I might be able to help.

Oops. The video on your front page is no longer available on YouTube.

[edit] Now it's back. Weird.

No video? That's bad. Youtube used to be pretty stable. We probably should put up a mirror of the screencast at vimeo. That's what we're going to do next.

Thanks for the heads up.

Wow, this looks like a really nice app. Very polished.

Thanks! I'm glad the effort paid off. For me to be able to work with an app almost every day, the app's interface, its "look and feel" is important enough to put as much effort in as we did. I'm pretty happy the way it turned out, glad you like it.

Maybe double-click to edit an item for faster access?

Double-click edit will is on the todo-list -- will be implemented somewhere in the next week or so.

look really promising! but submitting anything but ascii characters gives error 500, like the swedish letters å ä ö..

tack! and förlåt, I was pretty sure I tested this, but obviously missed something, thanks!

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