Windows 8 Pro 64-bit is now installed on my Dell Adamo laptop. And I rarely venture into the Metro UI unless if I’m forced to. – Brooke Crothers (CNet)

I knew it, I wasn’t wrong!

Almost a month back, I wrote a usability review for Windows 8, when I had first got my hands on it on a Laptop – and yes that wasn’t a good review. From that day forward, I did not receive a feedback or comment saying I was wrong. From novice users, to power users, from young enthusiasts to grand mother and from Gadget gurus to User Experience gurus and critiques they all agreed that “Windows 8 is a Solution from Microsoft that got deeper into Problems!”

You will love it of course on Tablet!

Of course if you’re one of the relative few who have a tablet like the Samsung slate or Microsoft’s Surface or a touch-screen laptop like Acer’s Aspire S7, yeah, then Metro is front and center, as it should be. But on a traditional laptop it’s problematic. – Brooke Crothers (CNet)

That’s why Apple, probably the biggest single force behind the rise of the touch interface, hasn’t done something similar with its OSes. Making iOS the launch point and default interface on Macs would not go over well,Steve Job’s edict nixing the idea of touch on laptops notwithstanding.
So, Microsoft is going where Apple won’t.

Despite 40 million Windows 8 licenses sold!

Despite Microsoft’s claim for selling record high Windows8 license, all those millions of users out there with their old PCs dont feel excited for the concept of a touch-based Start-Screen!

“Windows 8 may take a while to win over computer users” says Acer’s president. He further mentioned in his interview the Steve Jobs vision for a touch-based tablets will win him the market than injecting it into the regular Macs.

He noted that while Apple is good at coming up with new technologies like the Retina display, “surprisingly Apple did not adopt touch-screen” for its MacBooks.

In October of 2010, Steve Jobs said that Apple had done “tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical,” referring to touch on laptops. And so far that philosophy appears to be intact at Apple, none of whose computer products — as opposed to its iPhones, iPads and iPods — feature touch screens.

Learning Curve is Steep – I told you so, and they agreed!

Windows 8 is a “new system that consumers must learn and the learning process will prevent the operating system from taking off quickly,” – PC maker agrees.

Until touch-based laptops and hybrids are both plentiful and cheap, Windows 8 may not gain much traction. And that may take a while.

Apps, Apps, Apps! Where are they?

While it’s true that Windows 8 can run legacy software just fine in Desktop mode, Metro apps are what will sell people. Some good apps currently available demonstrate the possibilities of Metro, but they don’t offer a compelling reason to change your entire work flow.

The strength of iOS is that Apple’s operating system is the cleanest around. Windows 8 app experience has yet to be defined, which could benefit Microsoft in that it has an open canvas to paint on.

Settings aren’t sexy, but they shouldn’t be confusing, either.

Microsoft ought to make some decisions, and fast, about cleaning up the confusing mess of its under-the-hood options. Sometimes they’re behind the Settings charm in Metro. Other times they’re buried in some Desktop mode window.

Businesses don’t look excited about Windows 8!

Solving the above problems alone won’t work without helping people realize what’s so great about Windows 8.

Windows 8 will struggle in a consumer marketplace that is increasingly turning to Macs to solve its problems.

How Microsoft can best do that I’ll leave to greater marketing minds than myself.  Maybe there’s a killer “laptablet” coming at the beginning of next year, but there’s little doubt that Windows 8 has a hard path to trek in 2013.

The post Microsoft troubled deep with Windows 8! appeared first on 30 Minute Usability Review.

You are developing or designing a new app, and just got confused with how certain screen like Splash, Login, Lists and forms could look like…don’t pause it there. Visit http://pttrns.com showcasing awesome iOS apps with screen types. Still thinking…hurry up, click http://pttrns.com.

Making new app..but got no idea!

Alright, worry no more. First things first, get yourself some awareness on how others have done it. Honestly there is billions of apps, and majority have done it really great. So when you launching a new app, you got to be sure, you have something that others have not done it or not done it well before.

Usability is the key to design/develop great apps, but iPhone has proven that it can also come with beauty and elegance. Ever wondered, why all of sudden everyone falls in love with iOS apps? That’s because they can enjoy great user experience with really awesome looking design. Most of the time close to real objects carrying in their hands, like a notepad, calendar  sketchbook  and a clock/timer in your hands.

Lets make an app right now! 30 minutes.

So you were thinking on designing a new app and you have also got a great idea too. Yep, agreed, your idea sounds great! So whats the name of your app? Well, you can choose the better app title later, right now you could say “Lorem Ipsum.”

1. Choose App Icon

To get better understanding on the app icon, again lets see how they done it. Visit http://iosicongallery.com and get yourself some awareness on how great app icons been developed for great apps. You can either browse all icons, or choose a category to see specific type of icons of apps. For example if you making a game, check these icons, http://iosicongallery.com/category/games.

2. Choose Splash Screen design

Once your app launched from home screen and while its loading, it should show a loading screen which is commonly known as Splash. Splash gives your users an idea of what this app is about while its loading. Get a clue of some of these great splash screens for their apps. http://pttrns.com/categories/2-splash-screens.

3. Designing Navigation

You really have to be very careful with choosing the right design for navigation in your app. It has to intuitive, easy and quick to navigate between screens of your app. See for example these really cool, but highly usable navigation ideas. http://pttrns.com/categories/13-navigations

4. Showing list of values

Most common part of apps is mostly showing list of values and navigating through them. Make sure that scrolling through the list should be easy with fingers. These are great examples http://pttrns.com/categories/17-lists.

5. Make “Search” very easy and quick!

Mobile users are always in hurry, and they don’t have time to spend time on looking for a particular content, friend name, location or number from within the app. If they don’t find what they need, they will simply scrap that app out from their iPhone permenantely. So yeah you got it, it should be very easy and quick, and they have done it awesome. http://pttrns.com/categories/22-search.

6. Everyone wants to share about everything!

We know it and we love it, and we want to share everything with everyone on facebook, twitter, youtube and anywhere else in our social society. So if your app has anything to share, make sure its very easy and quick for them to do so. See how well they do it http://pttrns.com/categories/19-share.

7. Exploring Photos and Media!

I don’t have to explain how crazy we are about taking pictures and making movies from our rich, smart phones. Showing these photos and movies http://pttrns.com/categories/5-photos.

8. Signing Up and Login!

Many utility apps require users to be validated before accessing or sharing the content from apps. If your app requires users to login, or sync with servers and cloud to fetch data then you don’t have to do it in a typical web form style login or signup. Login and Sign up can still be very interesting and aesthetically good.

http://pttrns.com/categories/15-signups

http://pttrns.com/categories/12-logins

9. Settings should not be hard!

Last but not the least, every app needs to be configured to match its user’s need and set various options. On web or desktop applications we do this in a very typical style like bunch of forms and tabs, but in apps they have gone much better. See how http://pttrns.com/categories/18-settings.

10. What should we show when their no data!

Yeah well, when there is content you can show it really nicely in your app. But when there is no data, no content, how should that screen be look like. Should you show nothing, or just say “No data/content found” or there is anyway nice you can do. For example http://pttrns.com/categories/35-empty-data.

One Last Thing!

So by the end of this article, I hope you have got good enough information and understanding on designing and developing great apps. But yes, all of this cannot happen without understanding the key principals, human interface guidelines that Apple has put in place and handy for developers to make such great apps. You can learn all of that on Apple’s developer website here.

For more on mobile design you can visit…

• Smashing Magazine New Mobile Design Book (2012)
• Design Cutting Edge iOS Apps With Adobe Fireworks
• Mike Mates (iPhone UI designer) – very first designer who created great designs for main iPhone UI.

The post pattrns – Design Great iOS Apps in 30 Minutes! appeared first on 30 Minute Usability Review.

Poor readability, clutter of content, less emphasis on clarity of sections and too many obvious issues of alignment/spacing on the homepage making Adobe.com’s new website one of the worst redesign.

Disappointing by surprise!

One of the recent and disappointing surprises I got today is when I visited the Adobe.com, and found the design completely out of this age, and it looks like they have gone back ages in their sense and aesthetics for presenting their brand.

New Redesign

While everyone is going towards modern, contemporary, web2.0 responsive web design for showcasing their brand, Adobe.com being the prime design tool/products based company on the contrary seems not care too much about it.

Their previous web design was one of the best official website design for a corporate/product based company. That looked modern, contemporary, elegant, very much like Web 2.0, and very crisp and clean.

Previously done website

For your curiosity sake, go check few others, and see for yourself how cool they presenting themselves. Such as http://www.apple.com/, http://www1.sap.com/index.epx, http://www.microsoft.com/en-pk/default.aspx, http://www.ibm.com/us/en/

Scroll it yourself! Can you read?

Scroll through the page and scan it from header to footer, all I see is clutter of text. The only thing I can clearly see and it hardly gets my attention is the big bill-board image for “Adobe Illustrator” and its description. In modern responsive website, where we focusing more on playing with typography, and making each and every content easily readable, sections should become in focus and easy to identify the difference between each, Adobe.com seems does not care any of this, not at least today!

Too much alignment, spacing issues!

Designing a website for anyone has become very challenging day by day, because customers for who you want to design the website, has become more touchy about: simple but clear and crisp use of graphics, better use of Typography, elegantly designed content and navigation areas and carefully placing all of these in perfect alignment and spacing.

Looking at the homepage, you immediately notice many issues with content placement, alignment, unbalance between content sizes in same row, improper spacing, margin and padding around content on the page. Can this be this poor? considering Adobe.com.

Poor visibility of Adobe products!

The prime focus of Adobe.com should be to highlight its one of the most selling and prime products on their homepage such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash etc. But rather they chose to show one image on the top and its static by surprise. I mean come-on in the world of famous JQuery sliders where you can show more than one product with a slideshow very nicely, why are they only showing one product.

Goto Adobe.com homepage and can you find your favorite product, unless Yes you mouse-hover over Products link on header and see a drop-down of links for products.

Footer is junk of links! Can you get anywhere from there!

I can’t expect from a company like Adobe to be showcasing their common accessibility link on footer in such a cluttered layout. Come-on, cant there be any cleaner way of presenting these even on footer, if Adobe don’t know how, look at some of these websites and learn.

Come-on, do the Responsive properly!

Open Adobe.com on your favorite mobile device such as iPhone, and it will run as responsive but you will see it done poorly. It appears buggy, issues with text-alignment, improper spacing or too much spacing. It looks like an intern of web-design, has worked on this official Adobe website.

Explore inside! Are they better!

Keep exploring the website, and see it from page to page and link to link. Do you find any of the pages in this re-design looking any better. All of these inside pages have same issues like, clutter of content, small use font for headings and section titles making them hard to get attention, products poorly emphasized.

One Last thing!

Why over-reacting!

We use Adobe products every minute of our life (designers), it’s like an integrated part of our life. All those extremely super awesome websites created using Adobe products, all those wonderful Marketing campaigns become live because of Adobe products and yet the company who created these products is not able to pull out a really awesome presentation for their own official website.

Why I am over reacting, because if you remember the previous re-design on Adobe.com, which was like a Left-Justified layout on the browser, that was Awesome. When you saw that re-design, everyone loved it, and also tried to copy it and follow that as trend for making other websites.

I am sure, you can make better than this.

The post Adobe.com redesign done pathetic! appeared first on 30 Minute Usability Review.

Microsoft Windows 8, has been in the talks for quite a long time now, and has gained significant level of importance among techies and specially those who live by the rule of user experience and design. No doubt, as oppose to previous versions of Windows its not as simple and small tweak in the look, but an entirely fresh idea of interface to interact with software. Having said that, the buzz does not seem to be justified by looking at the Start screen only, because there is all that more that we use everyday on Windows, and it has that old same look.

Brand new look! on Start!

Alright, here we power-on, and Wow. It stars very fast and there you see it “oooooh Metro, oh i mean Windows8 Style UI start screen”. No doubt, it looks really Cool and AWESOME!

So as I see all new nicely tiled Start screen, my first impression is where is the desktop. I am looking for Start button, a taskbar and desktop shortcuts for my software. With all that in mind, it takes a fraction of minutes to digest the all new look of Windows 8.

Its aLive! and it breaths.

Colorful tiles give Start screen a very cool effect, and when they are live with latest updates they look even better. It really feels the best use of aesthetics on an interface and give modern contemporary look for an OS.

All that magic charm goes away, when switch to desktop view! sad.

As soon as you switch to the desktop view, you will loud out “Holly Crap”, Windows8 is all that same Windows7. So what was all that crazy buzz about Metro, Windows8 UI Style for Windows8 for all these days…that was just the Start screen…duh!

Everything slides out of your screen you saw on start, when you close it and you see same old desktop, same start button (but its flat gray button, look yaikh) and same task bar that I was missing (oh Yes!)

How do you feel, when Folders and Software open in same old Windows legacy style that you used to see for all these years, one could say “thank you Microsoft for not horrifying us with too many changes“, or could say, “is that all you could fashionize for Windows8“.

But wait, should I learn how to use it!

I am using it and I can now understand when they are saying that…

“Learning curve is steep and in-app navigation isn’t obvious.”

Two UI, confuse me like brrrrr!

In Windows 8, you get two different style of interfaces, (1) Metro (Win8 Style UI) and (2) Same old Legacy Desktop. When using OS it feels like two different Operating Systems running at the same time…wow! (You can say, you get 2 in the price of 1!).

In an Study by Nielsen he found that the users took issue with the operating system’s supposed “duality” that includes a tablet-focused Start screen and a more traditional “PC-oriented desktop screen.”

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/windows-8.html

PC Mag goes even further and says…

“Windows 8 Is a Desktop Disaster”

Because both Interfaces (Metro and Desktop) work differently, which makes it highly inconsistent user experience. Its an interface, where OS wants its users to learn and remember where to go for which features and how they will work.

Hidden actions, oh yes Charms are very charming

In Windows8 all your PC screen is covered by either the Start Screen and Tiles, or when playing an App, its also full screen. So there is no place you can see action buttons for allowing users to perform windows related actions. All these actions are placed in a bar of icons that is hidden and you can discover while you point mouse to screen’s upper-right corner on PC.

When we designing Apps/Web we face this challenge of showing all important action on the screen so that user dont have to think or learn on finding them. Accessibility to actions in an App or OS is so important that one cannot leave it to users to discover it themselves. Hidden actions make it difficult for users and adds burden to remember different actions hidden at different positions. We dont expect all users to understand actions that change on different screens and do different things.

If users cant find an action, they will not be able to work, so they will get frustrated and simply stop trying a feature.

99% of all consumers will never find the damn thing same Start button thanks to new Start Screen in all its Metro glory.

Thanks Microsoft, I can write tutorial on switching off Windows 8

No Start button! So how do you shut it down? Well, shutting down Windows used to be a simple matter of clicking the Start button and choosing the “Shut down” option. and here is what my Tutorial would say and its very first my Howto Tutorial…

How to Shut down Windows 8!

1. Hover your mouse over the Zoom icon that appears in the lower right corner of the screen,
2. Click the Settings icon,
3. then the Power Icon,
4. Clicking Shut down will close Windows 8 and turn off your PC.

or you can quickly Press Power button to shutdown.

There are several ways of shutting down Windows 8, but they are not quick or convenient. Even with the Start button gone, why didn’t Microsoft include a more user-friendly way to close Windows 8?

One last thing

• Windows 8 look like Windows 7 with a fancy layer of colored and rich tiled screen on top.
• It makes it difficult for users by removing legacy Start Button/Icon and leaving customer unsatisfied.
• Also its one OS which Microsoft is aiming for all platforms, yet it comes with different apps for each and store as well. Confused.

Dont worry, you will soon hear an Update for fixing their own mistakes.

The post Windows 8 – fresh new Start, but same old inside! appeared first on 30 Minute Usability Review.

Quick Facts = When launched from the desktop, it looks same as IE9. It scores 320+6/500 when tested for HTML5 while Safari takes lead. F12 Developer tool is still increasingly shoddy compared to the Firefox tools, Firebug, the Webkit Inspector etc. Metro mode is ideal for tablets and touch-screens. and Yes it faster than IE9.

Oh! Yes it now runs on Win7

Windows 7 users now can enjoy the new browser’s faster speed and support for higher standards, while IE10 initially launched as an integral component of Windows 8. Currently, the Windows 7 version is known as “preview,” and it’s available for download. (does that means ‘beta’, in other words!)

Download, Install

Windows8 Launched with IE10 installed by default and you, the Windows 7 users were still using IE9. Now you can try it yourself, and download on your Windows 7 PC, visit Microsoft’s TestDrive.

Launch IE10, what you see is IE9!

I downloaded, Installed and wohala I am running it…but wait, is there any difference!

When launching IE10, I can hardly spot the difference comparing it with IE9. It looks same. In features, it does the same with a little improvement, such as, pinned sites on the new Start Screen, or Taskbar, Peek and window snap, just lists etc. Comparing with its competetors, it may not look as pretty as Chrome, Firefox etc.

Navigation buttons (forward and back in history) are integrated well into the window. Tabs and the address bar share the same space.  With too many tabs open, UI looks crowded. Users can get to all of the options from the little gear icon on the top right. The options menu is still there for the more technically inclined but it hasn’t received any update.

Finally supports HTML5 as as all!

Oh, yes it does support HTML5 to an extent where it can compete with other browsers, pretty well. Finally and finally supports CSS3 like text-shadow, transforms, and animations.

While automated compliance testing rarely shows the whole story, we can see that IE10 surpasses IE9 by a considerable margin:

http://html5test.com/compare/browser/ie10/ie09/safari60.html

Out of a possible 500, IE9 earned a score of 138 with 5 bonus points, compared with 448 and 13 bonus for Google Chrome. IE10 changes this picture considerably, with a score of 320 and 6 bonus points. While Safari still taking the lead. Looks Steve Jobs really pushed Safari to be the best alternative to flash.

IE10 has taken one level further by including HTML5 Touch Events, which lets a webpage respond to gestures.

Yes, it runs faster than IE9

Quickest browser yet, is definitely IE10 on Windows 7. Here is reality check…

When I ran it first time, it felt really faster compared on my windows 7 coreI7 Dell laptp. But by looking at the tests i did on these browsers, it appears that Chrome and Firefox taking lead.

When will Microsoft understand the need for Robust Debug Tool!

While developing web pages, there is always been this need for a robust debug tool like FireBug on FirFox or in Chrome. IE is a hell, when it comes to developing browser compatible web pages. When developing sophisticated websites, with interactions, responsive design etc, while everything runs perfect on FireFox, Chrome and Safari there you face hundreds of browser compatibility issues with IE. Fixing issues in these popular browser is as easy as editing a document in Photoshop and thanks to FireFox. But IE’s Developer Tool has never learned and has never evolved to facilitate the web developers like us.

IE10 has same F12 Developer Tools as IE9 and it’s better than nothing, but badly developed compared to the Firefox tools, Firebug, the Webkit Inspector etc.

As well as increasing check of compatibility filters I browser like checking rendering mode as …

IE10 compatibility mode
IE9 standards and quirks modes
IE8 standards and quirks modes
IE7 standards and quirks modes

Ultimately, Microsoft has few excuses. I hope they concentrate on those facilities now less urgent work is required on the Trident rendering engine.

One last thing!

Ok, let me say … IE10 is a good browser. Faster and offers the most of HTML5 and CSS3 features we find in Chrome and Firefox.

We appreciate you IE10:

• For tablets you can enjoy Metro mode, and enjoy touch gestures
• Excellent support for HTML5 and standards
• A fast interface with deep OS integration

IE10 bad points:

• Extremely Poor development tools, why Microsoft never grow-up
• Microsoft’s pace of development is too slow

IE10 has tried to level up with other browsers — but it’s not there yet.

We all know, we will hardly love IE10. Sorry, Microsoft.

The post IE10, how much it scores out of 10! appeared first on 30 Minute Usability Review.

Quickly note-down my thoughts on the go, quickly create a short list of points before I go to a meeting, quickly take notes while I am in the meeting with others, quickly note-down list of shopping items before going to grocery store, Oh I got an idea and I can quickly note it down. I am driving and I can quickly add voice memo.

When your iPhone gets overloaded with a lot of Apps, Pictures, Movies, Songs and data, then you start to get rid of some of these which are not in use. So I am removing apps that are not really important, or I don’t want those on my iPhone anymore.

Every time while I am doing that, I have for some reason never want to delete this one app from my iPhone and that is NOTE’d.

Even if I don’t use this app very often, even if I have many other most important apps on my iPhone that I would like to keep, I would still just don’t want to remove “NOTE’d”, to free up some space. And there is no reason why, once you fall in love with an app.

App installed, showing new icon on my phone

App installed for first time on my iPhone, and I am looking at the icon, and I fell in love. Its very cute, elegant design of a simple small notepad. It makes me feel like I can carry a small palm-size notepad from the real world

Launching the app

Here we go, and immediately I see very simple, clean interface that immediately dissolves me into this app. And it pushes “Oh Oh lets add some notes.”

It feels very handy, in adding notes of any kind. From text to pictures, voice and media I can add notes in any format.

Home screen, is set of your Notepads

Upon launching of the application, you immediately see all your notepads on its home screen. So its very simple and clean interface, it has all your notepads, ability to add new notepad, see all your notes at once, or see all your bookmarked notes.

You’ll love to add notepad

Before you start adding notes you need to first create a notepad (you can notebook). Tap (+) Plus icon button on the top right of the screen, and it pulls down the Add notepad screen. And again, its very simple.

1. Select your favorite cover of your notepad,
2. add a title to it,
3. and tap the (tick-mark) icon on the top right to say done.

Very simple, and your new notepad is added. Immediately you will see a blank screen showing now you can start adding your notes.

1. Tap “Add a new Note” button (+)
2. You can type in, also attach pictures, voice and map
3. Tap done button (tick-mark) on top-right of screen.

Its very quick, and its true

Yes, I can quickly note-down my thoughts on the go, quickly create a short list of points before I go to a meeting, quickly take notes while I am in the meeting with others, quickly note-down list of shopping items before going to grocery store, Oh I got an idea and I can quickly note it down. I am driving and I can quickly add voice memo.

What else I can do

• All your notes are saved on your phone, but can also be synced with Dropbox.
• Provides many sharing options, and can lock my particular notes with a password.

One last thing! I love NOTE’d

I don’t know, but this app really does the magic. Try it yourself and get it now from App Store

The post NOTE’d – 30 Minute Review (iPhone App) appeared first on 30 Minute Usability Review.

Most of the time I am struggling a lot with managing my tasks at work, at home and reminders for this and that. And there are many reasons for which I keep looking for a TODO app, which can be better than the ones I have, even though the one I have is very useful and comprehensive (i am talking about “things”!)

One of my friends told me about Any.do, and his point of suggestion was that its too simple and also looks good (he quoted metro!) And And since I care too much about how attractive an app looks I immeidately googled and tried to get review about it.

Ok, they say its awesome! but for me its too simple that it feels incomplete.

App installed, showing new icon on my phone

App installed for first time on my iPhone, and I am looking at the icon. hmmm, this look. Yes it does feel like clean, simple app from its icon. So good job on this.

Launching the app

Alright, so the app starts and plays a simple how to video for adding your first task (you hardly know its a video), and options to signup for an account (which is options), you can skip it also. It gives focus on facebook because it shows big bold Facebook signup button. You also see other options such as Login, or Register links.

Once you are through the initial screens, you are ready to add your first TODO, by simply swiping/dragging vertically on your screen.

It looks Metro UI on iOS – does it makes sense!

Any.DO features a simplistic design and focuses on making the tasks easily accessible and visible to the user. However, when I look at it, in the first place, it reminds me Windows8 Metro UI. So as an iOS user, does it feels natural on an Apple device. I find it hard to accept, sorry!
Microsoft reportedly changing Metro design branding to ‘Windows 8′

It feels like tasks are less emphasized!

Any.do has a lot of competition on iOS platform. Looks like few of the top ranking apps have done it correct on emphasizing tasks, by using the correct typography style, large enough font size, thickness in font weight, spacing and separation between each task, showing related details like project/tag it belongs to, placing tasks in a list container etc.

Hold your phone when using Any.do, it feels like Ok, where is my tasks (because their typography style is very thin, they loose their importance by choosing the wrong font style.)

Even though its very simple interface, I still want to see these lists in some containing boxes (like a native list-box of iOS interface), because these feel like floating in the air and I have to use my brain to separate each task and category from each other.

One thing that many iOS users love is while using Apple apps, you don’t have to spend time on thinking and separating different elements in a interface. They are clearly visually intuitive enough.

I think this is one thing that bothered me all the time, that I can hardly separate one tasks with another, because they feel like simple list or para on a small mobile screen, or their folders don’t have enough visual to make them look separate sections.

Gestures perform actions, but in portrait view only!

If you swipe/drag down the screen, you are ready to add new task. Pull down and hold to initiate voice input (and it uses its own voice recognition, which is compared to SIRI, has terrible voice recognition.) You can swipe horizontally on a task to mark it as completed.

All of these features and few others, work only when you viewing app in Portrait mode. Most of these gestures not recognized when using phone in ladscape mode (although in landscape you might like the detailed view of calender with tasks.)

Its too simple, it feel like incomplete!

No doubt its very simple application, and for some one who likes getting things done, such as “Make a call”, “Buy a present for wife for wedding anniversary”, “Pay bills”, “Buy milk when going home” kind of stuff. It is still an incomplete app, to use for managing professional work life tasks and cleaning mess.

Not optimized for iPad, can you believe that!

Any.DO is simply not optimized for iPad’s larger screen. I don’t have to add any words here…

For example, it lacks…

1. Task groups have less features

I would like to keep my tasks grouped as per “Projects” , by “Work Role”, “Designing Web” or lets say “Usability Reports” and each of these categories might have some deadlines, tags to group them by type, have notes on each of above etc.

2.Lack of ability to Repeat task

I would like to add tasks to repeat with a defined schedule or a specific date of each month. Such as we do in Official Reminder app of iOS 5 allows users to repeat a reminder every day, every week, every 2 weeks, every month, and even every year. Or in Things, I can create an scheduled task repeat on specific date of each month. such as “Pay Credit Card bills” on 4th of each month.

3.Lack of ability to make future task visible in Today for remider

I have many tasks scheduled for tomorrow, day after tomorrow, this week and may be next month. I would still want some of those tasks to be visible in my Today’s TODO list so that they keep reminding me as “Ok, I am aware of these tasks.”

One last thing!

Any.do though, and is definitely a good app to manage anything from a shopping list to a job from a projects. But it barely covers the bases, and doesn’t add anything of value to list makers that you can’t already find in great apps such as Things and Awesome Note.

I am using these…

• Things http://culturedcode.com/things/iphone/
• Awesome Note http://bridworks.com/anote/en/main/index.php

The post Any.do – 30 Minute Review appeared first on 30 Minute Usability Review.