WeekPlan Roundtable

Welcome to the first Folyo design roundtable, where we’ll examine WeekPlan, an online weekly planner.

The way this works is pretty simple: just try out the app, and then leave your comments here to explain how you’d improve the usability, the design, or anything else really.

Leaving a simple text comment is fine, you don’t necessarily have to mock up something. But obviously if you have the time to do it it will add a lot to the discussion.

You can also reply to other people’s comments, and WeekPlan founder Aymeric Gaurat will also be joining us to give his reactions to your feedback.

Oh, and if you want you can use Disqus’ nifty “Subscribe by email” feature to get email alerts when this thread is updated.

Let’s get this started!

  • http://aymeric.gaurat.net Aymeric

    I am the developer behind WEEK PLAN.

    Thanks for participating to this round table guys!

    INTRODUCTION
    I am preparing to launch a paid plan soon and it made me realize I never really spend time on branding so this round table will be very timely.

    Here are some background information to help start the discussion:

    TARGET AUDIENCE
    People who have read the book “7 habits of highly effective people”, usually a mix of team leads, managers, executives and students.

    With the coming of the paid plan, I would like to focus the branding on the team leads / managers / executives.

    VALUES I WOULD LIKE TO EXPRESS
    Elegance, Growth, Wisdom.

    UX FEEDBACK FROM USERS
    - Some people have complained that Saturday and Sunday are too small
    - A lot of actions rely on mouse hover, which is incompatible with iPad.
    - The Vision page is not well integrated with the Planner, the Planner is not well integrated with the Journal

    –
    I think using the analogy of a paper planner would work well. Planners make people look elegant and people understand how they work (pages / bookmarks to pages).

    So WEEK PLAN could be an opened notebook, like the design of the folyo blog.

    Anyway, I am eagerly waiting for your critique and suggestions.

    Thanks!

  • http://www.sachagreif.com/ Sacha Greif

    Although there’s a lot to be said about the homepage, I’ll focus on the user interface since that’s my specialty as a designer.

    First of all the idea of showing the whole week at a time is really good, because this way the app doesn’t come across as “yet another to-do list app”.

    But I think that aspect could be accentuated more. For example, maybe use leather or paper textures to recall an actual notebook.

    The other thing I noticed is the lack of structure. Minimalism is good, but it might be taken a little too far here, and I think the UI would look cleaner and clearer with a couple lines or boxes to separate each day.

    • http://aymeric.gaurat.net Aymeric

      Hi Sacha, thanks for reviewing WEEK PLAN.

      1. Leather texture. Yes, maybe I don’t need a full blown notebook like interface but just some elements of it, like some classy handwritten font and some leathery texture here and there.

      2. Great point. Maybe a slightly darker background around the lists (instead of white) would make the white lists stand out more.

  • http://twitter.com/tank6b Jose E. G. Modecir

    Like the concept.

    First if you are targeting the corporate user. Consider getting out the “Satisfy” font and orange color. Adopt a more serious tone, select a sober and serious color scheme, this may be a starting point http://www.colourlovers.com/palettes/search?query=corporate

    You could make the top bar a little bigger and something like gray.

    Get a decent logo or at least use a good looking font for it.

    Love that it is a fluid design, but on this case looking at it on a widescreen monitor with the browser maximized… It looks not good. That’s will be the setup of 70%+ of your users.

    Maybe make the input lines bellow the names of the week with more contrast. They are almost invisible to the first time user. A icon may also help here.

    Also, make the week number more prominent. And lable properly the links

    Add a check-box to the left of every unfinished task, the action of “marking check” a task is a real world action you can easily replicate here. More white space between the tasks will be nice.

    Use a proper “drag me” icon for the tasks.

    Indeed on roll over is annoying on a tablet :(

    More white space between days will help a lot.

    Paper-like skeuomorphism may help, or make your work a hard to code UI. You have to try it, not a fan thought.

    All in all is a cool concept, you need to invest on the UX a little more.

    I hope my comments help.

    Good luck with it!

    Jose E.
    http://nlapse.com

    • http://aymeric.gaurat.net Aymeric

      Hi Jose,

      Sorry for the late reply, I had subscribed to the disqus thread and was expecting to receive an email when a new comment would be added, but I didn’t receive any notification.

      Thank you, this is a very complete review.

      Thanks for the colourlovers link. Funnily enough, the second result is very close to weekplan’s color scheme already (black + blue + orange + light blue + white). I will try to use the colors suggested on colourlovers.

      > You could make the top bar a little bigger and something like gray.

      Is that to make the website look more corporate?

      > Get a decent logo or at least use a good looking font for it.

      I am thinking picking a handwritten font for the logo, to remind of a paper planner. I am considering Dakota: http://www.ffonts.net/Dakota-Regular.font

      > looking at it on a widescreen monitor with the browser maximized… It looks not good.

      What makes it not look good on big screens?

      The rest of your suggestions are useful, thank you!