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Beta - Don't Make me Think!


jeffwest

Idea

Wow this design reminds me of Windows 8. Did Evernote hire the same design team from Microsoft?

 

1. Take something that is perfectly usable and everyone is used to, and completely turn it on it's ear for no good reason.

2. Determine how the users SHOULD use the product and then force them to think and work like you do.

3. Add steps (clicks) to basic functionality.  

4. Make the user struggle and constantly think about how to do use the product instead of the task at hand. 

 

I hope this beta is not forced on me...EVER. Just in case, I'm Googling "Evernote Alternative".

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I agree completely. You'd think interface designers would have learned from observing the Widows 8 blunder! Here's a few more you didn't cover that the two have in common:

 

  1. Bury useful and frequently-accessed features which were once easily accessible under piles of unintuitive menus, even though this poses a risk of alienating and/or hindering usability for those who have cognitive or physical disabilities. (Extra movements and clicks are more than mere inconvenience to some users. Ditto to having everything tucked away so you must play hide-and-seek to regain general functionality.)
  2. Decide that a normal workflow the user has long since become accustomed to is, in fact, 'distracting' and they no longer have a right to continue using that workflow as a result. (Note that in this case, Windows 8 actually did better than Evernote because they at least offered the permanent option to be able to go back to the desktop. With this web beta, it seems heavily implied it'll be rammed down our throats with no way to go back, at some point.)
  3. Ignore the usefulness of having multiple things open at different sizes on the screen; force everything to take up the entire workspace so users must exercise their short-term memory between simple tasks and abandon multi-tasking all together. (Again, Windows 8 scores one over Evernote here; at least you can use real versions of programs to avoid the nastiness of forced full-screen apps.)
  4. Remove functionality, and only plan to return a small portion of it.
  5. Force what seems to be a mobile-geared design onto users of laptops, desktops, and other non-touchscreen devices.

 

Some of those may be a touch redundant, but yeah. This is definitely Evernote's "Windows 8 moment," and it's sad to see. I, too, will probably not stick with Evernote if this new version is forced on us. As something optional, I really couldn't care less because "to each their own" and whatnot. But as something that could be forced on me, thus destroying the usability and making it easier to just constantly email myself as a means of keeping notes between devices, I hate it.

 

Truly, it's a shame that there's nothing comparable out there (in my experience)-- much less something which has fully functional mobile apps and a web interface as well as the multitude of organizational options Evernote offers.

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