(Nozbe 2.0) Design scoop - a beautiful productivity app coming soon

I’ve shared with you the wireframes of Nozbe 2.0 design more than a month ago.

Now, we’ve practically finished the design of Nozbe and we are working towards integrating the design with the Nozbe 2.0 features.

How will new Nozbe look like?

While I can’t reveal everything as we’re now integrating design, I can show you at least some parts of the new look, here goes:

Let me explain some of the details:

1 – New Projects tab with a nice and handy “New” button to quickly add a project anytime, anywhere.

2 – New way of showing actions, with great nicely designed “tick” for checking off items and avatars of users who created/modified the action

3 – Tiny calendar that will help you plan your week and days, handy for dropping off actions and assigning them new date

4 – Contexts tab with “new” button, similar to the “projects” tab.

5 – Beautifully-designed completed action that blends into the background.

More to come soon…

We are finally aiming to have the new Nozbe ready by the end of July but the exact launch date will be announced soon on this blog.

Hope you’re as excited as I am… I love the new design and can’t wait to have it online!

What do you think?

How do you like the new design so far? Any thoughts? Suggestions? Make sure to let me know in the comments!

Technorati tags: nozbe, gtd, design, ux, usability, productivity

(Nozbe 2.0) Testing Multiple Contexts per Action and Comments on Actions!

OK, so we have our new logo and most of the commenters actually like it. Now it’s time to preview some of the features we’re cooking for you for the final 2.0 version of our Nozbe software.

Multiple contexts per Action and Comments

Yes, you’ve been asking for these for a very long time and now we’ve got them for you! These are two of the most-requested features and now you can test both in Nozbe 2.0 beta:

Multiple Contexts per Action

Having an action that belongs to two or more contexts? Want to attach a context like “Home” and “Wife” to the same action? Or “Office” and “Boss”? Now you can!

There you go – add more contexts to actions, test these and let me know in the comments if you like what you’re seeing.

Note: due to backward compatibility issues, in “Nozbe Classic” this feature is not available and only the first context counts. Same applies to all the other front-ends of Nozbe and the iPhone app. You can only test this functionality by clicking to “Nozbe 2.0 beta” in your Nozbe account.

Comments on Actions

Many of you asked to add notes to actions and while I knew where you were coming from, I wasn’t convinced – now “Comments” adds a whole new dimension to this:

• You can now comment on the task to treat the comment as a note
• and you can comment on the action to make project sharing and collaboration more fun!

Please test the new features and let me know if you like them. Remember, they are available only in Nozbe 2.0 beta and they are still in the testing phase.

Big kudos to our chief developer Tom for pulling these two features off at an outstanding pace.

Do you feel the wind of change in Nozbe now? Don’t be shy and let us know what you think about these enhancements!

Technorati tags: nozbe, gtd, features, productivity, comments

(Nozbe 2.0) Designing new Nozbe logo

It’s the first day of June and this month we’ll be finishing Nozbe 2.0 (both design + development).

In this series of blog posts I’ll be showing you how is the Nozbe 2.0 process going and what we’re doing to make sure you’ll be able to get more done with Nozbe!

New Nozbe LOGO

I love the current Nozbe logo – you may like it or not, but I love it. And I never wanted to change it.

But after 2 years in business and hearing lots of feedback we decided to change the logo. To make it more modern, more “2.0”, but to keep the old feel.

Here’s what we did:

Step 1 – current Nozbe logo

What I liked about the logo? The big “O” with a clock and a smile. The clock is the symbol of productivity and time-management.

Step 2 – first designs of logo 2.0

The graphic designer knew I wanted to keep the clock and he started playing with it… The old-school-alarm clock looks really funny, don’t you think?

I didn’t like this and I told him I needed something different, so I started drawing…

Step 3 – my sketch of “clock” and “tick”

I told him I wanted to have the “tick” of a to-do list with a “clock” of a calendar mixed together.

Step 4 – taking my sketch for a spin

This looks really good. Almost perfect, there is a tick and a clock… but the “O” is not legible and you can’t really say it belongs to the name.

Step 5 – and the winner is…

This is the result we’ve been looking for! There will be some minor tweaks yet, but it’s more less the final logo we want to keep. The final logo will be released together with the new Nozbe 2.0 interface.

How did you like the process? How do you like the new Nozbe logo? What do you think? Please let me know in the comments!

Technorati tags: nozbe, gtd, logo, productivity, design

2 Years in Business and development of Nozbe 2.0 updates

Exactly 2 years ago, on May 14th we started charging for Nozbe after a three month “free beta” period.

Feels like it wasn’t all that long, but two years have gone away very quickly.

What started as a passion turned into a business

When I launched Nozbe I never thought I’d be building a full time business, yet starting from May 14th 2007 gradually Nozbe transformed from a side-project into a full-time project and I’m happy working on it.

We’re still a small business and we want to keep it that way. Nozbe started as a one-man shop (yep, just me!) and now I’ve got a great chief developer (Tomek), assistant and customer support representative (Delfina) and I’m constantly working with other great developers, user experience experts and graphic designers on an as-needed basis. Right now our team is quite big while we’re finishing up Nozbe 2.0. Lot’s of stuff to do and we want to get it done as soon as possible.

I love it when Nozbe really helps!

Helping people organize their lives and getting more stuff done is both fun… and very rewarding… and helps my personal development, too!

Thanks for being with us and for choosing Nozbe!

Thanks to you Nozbe is improving and getting better and better and thanks to you we’ve got a great job and we really love what we do. Hope you can see this love while working with Nozbe :-)

Nozbe 2.0 beta was just a technology preview

While Nozbe 2.0 beta is already usable, the final Nozbe 2.0 will be a lot more polished and will have a slightly different layout and a lot better design.

We’ve been listening!

We know you like the speed and the way Nozbe 2.0 operates. We know you want it nicer and more beautiful (we want that too!).... and we know you want to add notes to tasks and want to add multiple contexts to one action and you want more collaborative features.

These will all be there in Nozbe 2.0 (and more!)

We’re currently finshing the wireframes

We’ve conducted a series of usability interviews in April and based on the feedback we’ve received we are currently preparing the wireframes (layout) of the new Nozbe 2.0.

The first wireframes have already been sent to the graphic designer and he just started working on a great, beautiful and really modern Nozbe 2.0 look.

Here’s the new layout of Nozbe 2.0 (again, it’s not the design, it’s layout, design is in the works as we speak).

The image is small on purpose, you’ll see a bigger version of the actual design once it’s ready. It’s just to show where we’re going.

Sidenote: When the graphic designer is working on the beauty of the app, our development team is already working on the features!

Again, thanks for being with us and thanks for the 2 years in business and counting on many many more years to come!

Please post your feedback on the layout of Nozbe 2.0 in the comments :-)

Great UI improvements and beautiful interface coming to Nozbe soon!

First I’d like to thank everyone for their comments and info on the Nozbe 2.0 beta User interface. We now know the good, the bad and the ugly sides of the interface and we’re working hard on making it better.

I’ve hired an experienced UX (User Experience) expert to help me evaluate the feedbak from you, my users as well as my thoughts on the interface and we’re right now finishing up the wireframes to make sure Nozbe 2.0 will be great.

I’ve also hired an additional, really great graphic designer to help us make the user interface really beautiful.

Actually, we want to set a new standard for the productivity apps with the new interface, we’re aiming at a yet clerer interface and more polished looks.

I’ll post more previews on this blog as we advance, but we’re set out to make the new UI live by the end of May, so watch out for brand new shiny and really beautiful Nozbe.

Please bear with us as we make this all happen for you… and thanks for your continuous support!

Technorati tags: nozbe, gtd, productivity, ui, interface, ux, user, experience

Get your Productive Magazine 2 with Guy Kawasaki and 10 great articles

It’s been long in the making, but today we’re officially giving you the opportunity to read the second issue of our Productive Magazine and we’ve got great things in this one:

• Exclusive interview with Guy Kawasaki – bestselling author, serial Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist and ex-Apple fellow

Download your PDF version of Productive Magazine!

In the magazine you’ll also find 10 Great articles from top productivity bloggers about:

• New Year’s Resolutions
• The art of s aying No
• How to optimize your life and claim a couple of hours a week back
• Setting SMART goals
• Mind- mapping
• Working in groups
• ... and more!

We’ve got great authors like Leo Babauta, Dustin Wax, Michael Hyatt, James Mallinson, Kris Rowlands, Andrew Mason, Michael Deutch, Andrew Yang and yours truly…

The magazine is a total of 24 pages, 1 exclusive interview, 10 articles and most of all, it’s completely free! Feel free to share with your friends and family!

What do you think about this issue? Love it? Hate it? Let me know in the comments!

Your Editor,

- Michael Sliwinski
Follow me on Twitter: MichaelNozbe

P.S. The last issue of Productive Magazine hit more than 30K downloads – this time we’re aiming at 60K! Help us spread the word!

(2-Minute Productivity Show) Capture Tools - Notes and iPhone

Just recorded another episode of my 2-Minute Productivity Show, this time I’m talking about capture tools… and this time it’s the old-school Youtube embed recorded in iMovie on my Mac:

Hope you liked the episode – let me know which additional to Nozbe capture tools do you use?

Technorati tags: nozbe, gtd, 2minutes, show, productivity, david+allen, notes