August 11, 2008 in News by Nick Sivridis

Jello Poll results

First of all, I would like to thank everyone who took the Jello survey/poll giving me precious information which I need to use for making the next Jello Dashboard version much better.

The poll was up for almost a month and collected responses from 68 users. The number of responses was relatively small, but it was enough for outlining your opinion:

Speed

Most of the users (38.8%) think that Jello is not so fast but no so slow either and graded it with 3 of a scale from 1 (slow) to 5 (fast). The next group of users (29.8%) graded it with 4 into the same scale. So we have most users having good results on speed.

Workflow integration

Most of the users (56.7%) think that Jello Dashboard integrates good with their workflow and graded it with 4 of a scale from 1 (poor integration) to 5 (full integration). The next group of users (28.3%) graded it with 3.

Bugs

Most of the users (48,5%) don’t face up with bugs very often and graded it with 2 of a scale from 1 (never) to 5 (really often). The next group of users (22.7%) graded it with 1 (facing no bugs). That’s really good news, if you consider the number of bugs reported in previous versions.

Other data

Most of the users (49.2%) think that some GUI elements need to be re-designed and (84.6%) think that Jello Dashboard is an essential tool for Outlook and do not wish to have a similar standalone application.

As for the documentation, most of the users think that it’s incomplete (59.6%) and many wish that there should be more tutorials or screencasts about using Jello Dashboard.

Now, as for Outlook versions half of the users are using Outlook 2007 and the other half Outlook XP/2003. There were only 2 votes for older systems.

The Next Version (5)

From those results and all the bug reports, questions and suggestions I receive from users, I’ve decided to take the next version a little slower than usual and make some big changes.

The application got really complicated, trying to satisfy almost every request and Jello ended up having features that maybe nobody uses anymore (or used by a single user) decreasing speed and cluttering the whole GUI.

This is why I got lots and lots of questions about Jello Dashboard’s use. Novice GTD users are finding themselves overwhelmed by the tons of settings and are looking for a way to use it.

This is not a good thing.

So, besides speed increase and a new GUI design, I’ve decided to inject a real GTD workflow into Jello so, its use will be standardized.

Users will have to Collect, organize, review and do in a specific way, following the documented steps from GTD but there will also be the familiar way of on-the-fly reviewing and navigating. Add a new extJS GUI to this and you got some tips for the next version!

But don’t hold your breath waiting! A significant amount of code will have to be changed or added, and lots of things to be tested before a first developer release. Screenshots and info will be posted (I promise) as soon as a small portion of the application will be ready.

Until then I would love to hear your suggestions (some realistic ones would be great) and please do not request new features for the  current version.