I’m going to give it a week. I’m on the fence on whether it is better or not. If it doesn’t bother me too much after a week I’ll vote to leave it for consistency with the rest of the site.

I have one label for each of my clients, and every project gets assigned a label. So in addition to the extra clicks the new drop down requires I also miss being able to see my “client list”, to keep them all front of mind. So for myself, I prefer the old method of filtering. But I can imagine that if someone had a large number of labels that this new system would be better and less cluttered. Perhaps it could be configurable?

While we are talking about labels, I’ll put in another plug for a “No label” filter. I would really like to know if I have created any projects that are not assigned to a label.

Keep up the great work, love the site.

+1 on the No Label filter. i had hopes that it would come with this change. Still on the fence on whether or not this last change was a good one.

Please bring back the project labels showing without having to use a drop down to view and select the labels. Being able to select a label immediately without having to open the dropdown and search was much easier. Or, give us the option (maybe a sticky keep open feature)

I’m a new user so I can’t speak to the old feature. However, I am not fond of the drop downs. While I’m really enjoying Nozbe, I’m finding that for simple tasks – there are often too many clicks or mouse actions with drop-downs, etc. that interrupts the flow of GTD. The drop down with the project label is one example. Will keep trying it out though – perhaps I just need some more time to get used to the interface.

+1.
I definately prefer the old way.

Plus, the current dropdown interface is not working properly in itself. You click “New” to create a project on a certain label, and you get all the projects on all the labels listed under that certain label – so annoying!

Could you developping people give it a bit more thorough checkup before actually implementing a new feature?

+1 for the old buttons.
Dropdown makes things way tiresome and more complicated.

Please bring the old label buttons back!

+1 for the old left menu. Why have one unnecessary click to choose label?

However, I like the new label selection feature in the main part of the screen, when editing a project.

Suggestion:

• For project labels: Use the old filtering system
• Add a bubble so you can search for project(this is filters do not take the labels in account, so it is just filters in the regular projects)

Missing a good project-filter atleast in web. I love gmail, and the way you filter out labels etc would be great for projects.

This is also a problem for iphone: The project list should be sorted ALPABETICLY

I’d love to see Michael’s take on this, but his tweet of “new video BLOG post: New User Interface for Labels – How to Manage Projects better with Nozbe: http://t.co/LMUyaDt” led me to a site that would not load. Michael, is the site overloaded, or is the link wrong?

Ahh, skip twitter and go for this link http://www.nozbe.com/gtd/blog/sid-94e00e1cd3a8e88d13539be685291758

Really annoying!
I’ve used Nozbe this weekend and it became a real hassle.
Could you please revert this change ASAP?

1. I switch a few times per day.
2. I use labels for areas of responsibility as well as for separating out someday maybe projects.
3. All labels were immediately available and afforded a quick switch.
4. The two clicks seems to be the one downside for me. As stated above I remain on the fence as to whether this is significant.
5. No I do not need to see them, just be able to switch.

That said let me ask again for a setting for projects with no label. If the new interface allowed for that, I would be its biggest fan.

Michael, a short conclusion of my answer:

The new interface is REALLY annoying when I am doing weekly review/emptying inbox and planning. In everyday use, it is not a big deal.

1: I switch few times per day
2: I have four labels: Company A tasks, Company B tasks, private tasks, somdeday tasks
3: Ability to quickly switch labels when I need to plan, empty my inbox and get an overview
4: One unnecessary click for each label change
5: Not when I am in execution mode, but I do when I am in planning mode.

Michael, I am glad that you are listening to feedback this time and hope that I can help out.
/Daniel

i personally like it a lot – as long as it dosent take long to drop down the list it actually is great as even though its an extra click it forces me to make decisions right away as to what im going to work on it seems.

1. I switch 1-2 times per Hr.
2. Areas of responsibility,separating projects (subprojects),
3. All labels were immediately available (incl. ProjectCount) and afforded just a single click.
4. too many clicks to filter, creating new labels takes to long (too many clicks, changes from Keyb to mouse and back)
5. No I do not need to see them all the time, but like to see all of them on one screen if needed incl. ProjectCount.

Regarding Michaels questions:

1) I switch project labels a couple of times during the day. During revisions and when I clear my inbox its very frequent!

2) I use labels primarily to group projects according to my work in different organizations (“My org1”, “My org 2”, “My org 3”, etc. – altogether 6 organizations) and then I have labels for different aspects of my personal life (“Ph.d.”, “IT”, “Shopping”,...). I also have a “General” label which I use to distinguish projects within different aspects of my professional life that hold nondescript actions and actions that may be converted into projects. Of course, I have “Someday” projects within every “area”.

3) With the old system, all labels were instantly visible and availiable for clicking.
3.a This was great for sorting actions in the “Inbox” – I could simply click on a label and drag the action to the appropriate project (unfolding the action and editing it requires to much clicking).
3.b. During dayly routine, I could change my focus with one click!

4) Instead of simply clicking ONCE a tag to filter projects, one must click a lot and finding an item on the drowdown menu. Since I have 13 labels I AM FORCED TO SCROLL THE DROPDOWN :(

5) I don’t need to see all my labels all the time, I just want to be able to change filtering fast and easy.

In respect to the current implementation, when showing all projects, I think it would be more appropriate to have a bubble entitled “Showing all projects” than having a gray bubble “Labels”.

Two comments above caught my attention:

1. Christian Listl points out that we have lost the count of projects with that label. This is significant for me when I am trying to determine if I have any unlabeled projects (see my previous pleas for a way to show projects that are not labeled).

2. Daniel S raises the issue of the weekly review. That is the other area where I (and others) keep asking for functional improvements.

So perhaps the issue here is that the new implementation took away some functionality and did not really give any new functionality. It was really a cosmetic change, and therefore leaves the impression that the significant things which bother us daily are being ignored.

Michael, thank you for your concern.

1. I switch labels very often, especially in my weekly review, I switch labels 2-4 times a minute.
2. I have many projects – I use labels to group them by type / area of responsibility (Casual Tasks, Career, Health, Finance, Leisure, Ventures, Learning, etc.)
3. The old interface was quick to use, which is important because I switch labels all the time. Also, I prefer to see all the labels at all times.
4. I don’t like the new interface since it takes me x4-x6 the time to select a label (I need to click it, observe, scroll, and click again).
5. Definitely need to see the labels all the time.

Practically speaking, this makes my daily Nozbe work take 20-40% longer, and my weekly review takes 80-100% longer!
I’m sure everyone would agree: no cosmetic change can justify making the weekly review TWICE as longer.

Interesting… A lot of people complains about weekly review + labels usability. Maybe it’s time for the Nozbe team to consider separate weekly review interface(planning to create one for myself if they are too busy) because current UI doesn’t fit to review.

Maxim I agree. See my last note above. I think that a lot of the issue with the new label interface is that it fights with the weekly review.

If the view shown when clicking the word “Projects” on the left allowed opening a project in a new browser window so I could add, modify or complete actions and then close the new window and be back at the projects list right where I was, it would make the weekly review a straight forward linear walk down through the project list. As it is it causes me a lot of jumping around.

I also find the new change much more cumbersome and time-consuming.

Since clutter has been mentioned out as a concern, I’d like to point out that the left column is often shorter than the middle or right column. Therefore, having labels visible (and clickable) does not overwhelm the UI.

BTW, complete clearing the UI using expandable or pop-up web2.0 elements is also an extreme.

I hope that “Contexts” in the right column will not suffer a similar “bubble”-ization!

Zlatko, my left column extends so far down that I had to reply to you calling it shorter. In fact it has gotten so long that I desperately need it to be sorted, but that is another thread.

Michael, I also have a pretty long list of projects – sort would be nice :)

However, the whole label list together with the filtered list of projects should not be that long. That’s what I’m advocating.

Actually, taking about long lists, how about filtering with multiple labels? (by using bubbles as toggles? That would be graphically consistent with the site).

Hmm. I like the idea of filtering on multiple labels especially as projects can have multiple labels.

1. Very very often. Like several times a minute in a certain phase.
2. All my actions/projects fall into several categories that I have set. Not only in Nozbe but throughout my life – I even have corresponding wallets. I use the labels for these categories. Every project name of mine starts with a three-letter abbreviation of either of these categories – both in Nozbe and Evernote.
3. Not that I liked, but I needed to see all these categories at a glance, so that I could decide instantly which category any new action/project should belong to.
4. I can not see all the categories at a glance.
5. Yes. In fact, I have been preparing to leave Nozbe in the past few days because of this change.

1: I switch very often. Multiple times within 10 min.
2: Areas of responsibilty. I’m a student and on a typical day I work with many(if not all) of my areas of responsibilty(couple of student organizations, school and projects, and my start up firm). Thus i’m switching a lot.
3: Easy and fast to get an overview(no extra clicks). And i dont have THAT many labels(Max 10ish), so the filter option isn’t needed.
4: It is slow to switch labels. But i think the project bubble idea is good, altough it should be a search/filter of all my projects. Since i switch labels(or projects in a label) so often, even with the old interface it is slow to click a label then a project, then click a label and back again. So what i normally do in my work day is to use the search function and search for the project name, and click the project that way. (Often i’m not interessted in a particular label, but a specific project, and i want to find it fast). A full-project-list-bubble-filter would rock.
5: Yes, i want to minimize my clicks and get an overview. (might want the option to hide some though)
So for me, the label is a sorting function to get a overview and label project to an area of responsibilty. The actual usage is when i want to review a specific label/area-of-resp. But when i want to find a project on-the-go, i’m searching and not going through the label-function

Michael, thank you for your concern.
Please make this change as soon as your can.
As you can see, this new labels navigation is making many Nozbe users frustrated.
Personally, it became such a pain, I would consider moving to other services if it isn’t fixed soon.

I gave the new label system a few days and now I AM SURE I don’t like it. It looks great but it is very uncomfortable and seems to work slower than earlier solution. Please do something with it !

I agree Radek. Since my last post, I have done a large monthly review of my projects.

The new system is a pain in the *** when you have to move around a lot of actions, restructure your projects, etc.

Just want to restate what many others expressed in this thread – this change is counter productive. Takes away “big picture” of my projects, works slower (seems to require round trip to the server each time you switch).

I started showing back all the projects and considered putting different colors for groups of projects within each label – to fake visually previous effect – which is ridiculous, and just shows how much of the problem this is

Same here!
I moved many projects into one label just to overcome this problem.
Please fix it! It’s horrible…

I also like the old way much better – I like to see all my labels and select with one click. I select different labels very often.

Any ETA on the changes? =)

How often do you switch between labels in an hour of your work with Nozbe?

• 100% in a single session (read your GTD about weekly review)

What do you use the labels for / How do you use them?

• There is a shortage of filtering and I, plus others according to the forum, are adapting to what is available. So labels and contexts are being used for many things.

What did you like about the old interface most?

Ease of use.

What don’t you like about the new interface most?

It is cartoonish.

Do you really need to look at all your labels all of the time?

Yes.

The last month have been really frustrating with this label change, this has been a chance for me to examine other task managers.

I’ve made up my mind and switched to Todoist, which personally better fits my needs (faster, more minimalistic, supports sub-projects).

As a side note, I’ve been using Nozbe for the past 1-2 years, and overall I think it’s a really good product, among the best task managers in the market today.
I do feel that it’s important for the Nozbe team to listen to what users say and adjust the product in a more timely manner.
Godspeed! :)

I need to switch labels often many times over the course of the day. I use the labesls as Areas of Responsibility.

I act as a carer for my mother whose affairs are outside the UK in a different timezone, so while I am at work I may get emails etc regarding my mother’s affairs and need to deal with them promptly needing me to change label. I found it much easier when all labels were visible.

Late to the party, but I prefer the old interface: fewer clicks, plus I really liked the count of the number of projects in each label.

1. I switch a couple of times a day EXCEPT when doing a review – then it’s probably 10-20 times during the course of the review.
2. Labels are my areas of focus, plus each project gets tagged Work or Personal.
3. The old interface was simpler, fewer clicks, a good ‘dashboard’ of how many projects I had going, and was not distracting at all.
4. Too many clicks. One is enough. I find the new one jarring, because I mentally trip and have to stop and think about what it is showing. I would probably get over that.
5. Yes. Seeing all of my areas of focus helps me, err, focus. I can zero in on one if I need to, or look at all of them.

-Phil