"You'll get used to it"
Nov. 10th, 2011 09:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ordinalWhen I started using OmniFocus, I thought "this looks like a really powerful program, but the interface is extremely confusing and a bit clumsy frankly". Conventional wisdom is that it takes a while of regular use to get accustomed to how it works, but after that it becomes practically effortless. So I stuck with it.
After daily use of it for a year or so my verdict is that it is still a pain to use. It still doesn't feel natural and I still frequently delete things or misplace them by accident, mostly because of pane focussing and keyboard behaviour. The task info window is just irritating and I hate using it, though I have to regularly. The result of this is that while I know that all of my archived data are in there somewhere, I don't feel confident that I can get at them (even with Applescript - particularly with Applescript, actually, selecting content is a huge pain).
It isn't that OmniFocus is bad or crippled - if it were, I would not still be using it. It does lots of extremely useful things, and has great mobile clients. But you can't divorce "functionality" from "UI" in software and say "oh you'll get used to it" for the UI part, expecting users to make up for where it lacks. Well, you can, but you end up with worse software.
eta: here is an example from my current project work this morning.
There is a missing task name there. Why? Almost certainly because I pressed Enter while in the wrong pane and created it by mistake, but I might have deleted the name accidentally, or failed to save it properly. You might well say "so pay more attention then" but if I am doing this regularly after this length of time, either I'm just incapable of using software (which on balance seems unlikely) or there is something about this particular application.
After daily use of it for a year or so my verdict is that it is still a pain to use. It still doesn't feel natural and I still frequently delete things or misplace them by accident, mostly because of pane focussing and keyboard behaviour. The task info window is just irritating and I hate using it, though I have to regularly. The result of this is that while I know that all of my archived data are in there somewhere, I don't feel confident that I can get at them (even with Applescript - particularly with Applescript, actually, selecting content is a huge pain).
It isn't that OmniFocus is bad or crippled - if it were, I would not still be using it. It does lots of extremely useful things, and has great mobile clients. But you can't divorce "functionality" from "UI" in software and say "oh you'll get used to it" for the UI part, expecting users to make up for where it lacks. Well, you can, but you end up with worse software.
eta: here is an example from my current project work this morning.
There is a missing task name there. Why? Almost certainly because I pressed Enter while in the wrong pane and created it by mistake, but I might have deleted the name accidentally, or failed to save it properly. You might well say "so pay more attention then" but if I am doing this regularly after this length of time, either I'm just incapable of using software (which on balance seems unlikely) or there is something about this particular application.
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Date: 2011-11-10 01:55 pm (UTC)Rhianon Jameson
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Date: 2011-11-10 02:06 pm (UTC)