Annoyance from the homepage: I don't want to have to watch a video to figure out what you do. Watching a video for me is one step of engagement after I've figured out if I have some basic interest. If I can't establish that immediately, I'll just close the window. Videos can be great for more in depth info, but why not use the space taken up by "A better way to think" (which says nothing) to give a one-line description of what it the product is?
I guess on a similar note, I also don't want to sign-up with my e-mail to use and then consequently decide whether I do or do not like another GTD tool.
It would help to have a demo visitors can play around with in realtime.
I would respectfully say just the opposite. In a 45 second video, they showed the product, I saw someone using it who already knew how to use it and I had no more commitment than clicking "play".
A video is great but many people aren't going to bother with it if they aren't otherwise interested.
"A Better Way to Think" means nothing to me and is the only other thing to grab my interest. I would have clicked away in about 2 seconds if I didn't come across this on HN.
EDIT:
Why not something like "Your Brain. Organized. Everywhere." for a headline? It doesn't seem to be "a better way to think" but a way to "organize things the way you naturally think" [from the video].
I can definitely see myself using this and almost passed it up.
Oh, I like these suggestions. Yeah, tagline should change. Perhaps we'll use "Organize things the way you naturally think". Need to put more thought into this.
I live in a country with one of the slowest Internet connections out there, I'd really rather read a 2-line paragraph description than watch a 45-sec video.
Besides, YouTube is blocked in most offices - like mine.
I would suggest, even better would be a really well thought out picture/diagram that tells the story. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and it is far more likely it will be "read".
If you live in such a country do you expect free internet services to target you? At my startup a country with horrible internet is a country I do not care about, sorry but there's just too many other people to target and other things to worry about. The sense of entitlement to free services also bugs me.
I rarely watch videos like this; if I'm in a shared office environment I don't want to distract others around me. If I'm at home I'm probably browsing while my family watch TV so again, the noise of the video will be distracting. Without anything on the page to make me think it's worth reaching for the headphones, I'll move on.
Dropbox.com is pretty much a blank page with a video in the middle and a massive signup button. At the bottom there are links to the blog and whatnot. Is that what you mean?
We technically don't have a blog or any additional info yet, so we can't exactly link to that stuff. A few sentences of additional text we can and will do though.
We'll set up Facebook Connect for those that don't want to register directly. Reason we don't have anonymous demo page yet is that it would take significant work to get the data to port to your actual account if you choose to sign up. It'd be a bad thing for someone to spend 10 minutes entering data into the demo and then lose it on signing up. We actually had that before and it was a problem.
We want to do this, but for purposes of launching more quickly we haven't done it yet.
One compromise would be to have the instructions/intro entered into a demo page that people could interact with but not save - it would encourage exploration of the interface without encouraging/requiring people to enter their own info. TaskPaper for Mac does something like this in an appealing way, and has almost the same interface as WorkFlowy.
Yeah, that's a good idea. We messed around with that, but didn't quite get it right. People got too engrossed in that and never really got around to creating their own stuff. The jury is out on it, though. We're definitely not happy with our onboarding process as it currently stands.
Why would anyone using a demo page be under the illusion that they would be able to save their data? To wit: It's a demo page.
I agree with the above sentiment that not offering a means of trying the product out before registering is a blocker for many, many people( myself included ).
Just to offer another data point: I almost never watch videos but was interested enough to do so in this case. It was brief and offered enough to convince me that this might be my go-to application for managing my projects and tasks.
After playing with it for a few minutes, I am excited by its simplicity and ease of use. I've bounced around from Google docs to omni outliner to paper and pencil with just about everything in between, but I'm glad to have this tool at my disposal.
Yeah, good point. We've found that conversions are pretty good with a super stripped down site, but we're probably going to add some descriptive text too.
Is this a good space to compete in? There are zillions of sites like it, it's really easy to duplicate, and hard to make money off of? Nevertheless, best of luck to you.
I don't mean to be cynical but honestly to me this space is an analog to self-help books. Todo/notes/productivity apps probably can hook people for a few weeks but beyond that I imagine most people won't put forth the effort to keep up with it.
After using quite a few of these different systems myself and paying for many, I've found many people have the wrong philosophy. It's not about fitting your life to a system, but finding a system to complement your life.
Most importantly, when your life changes, change systems. I constantly switch between different combinations of apps to keep my life in order based on what's going on in my life at the time.
Point taken, but a big aim of ours (I'm one of the founders) is to help people do what they're already doing in a better way. I was creating tons of Google Docs full of lists before I started using WorkFlowy. They were pretty unmanageable, but they were the best thing I had at the time.
My guess is yes. I think it's worth trying, at least.
There may exist zillions of sites, but that in and of itself doesn't matter. If they can build a better product that can draw a large enough audience, that's important. I have personally looked around for tools like this, but haven't found anything that really kicks ass. Playing with their tool makes me optimistic -- they may be on to something.
I don't think they have to worry much about duplication. Building the product isn't the hard part, getting users is. Not sure if they'll be successful here, but if they fail it'll probably not be because of a clone.
Good point with the money, that almost certainly be tough. However if their product is useful enough and enough people use it they'll have an opportunity at making serious money.
My app Noodles (see: makeramen.com) was just another todo list on the Android market, and somehow -to my surprise- gained some very solid traction.
The amazing thing about the productivity software space is that everyone wants their app to do something different. It's also much more of a designer's space. I've seen countless apps that have all the "features," but the actual interface and interaction is so awkward you end up spending more time fighting the system than using it.
As many people have noted about 37signals, people realize the benefits of software like this almost immediately, and will easily spend money on it. Contrast that with other social sites where people are just not culturally incline to pay for services that connect you with friends. But you start talking about productivity, and helping people work faster, better, and more efficiently, and they see benefits immediately, which means they'll reach for their wallets immediately as well.
To-do, organization and project management are glaring unsolved problems that humans have been trying to solve for the last 2 million years. Yes, zillions of sites. But none, yet, are satisfactory solutions. Yet.
Woah. I get a very 37signals-esque feel from this. You know, the feeling when you've found something really awesome that could really help out your daily organization? I used to use backpack from 37signals, but ended up favoring my Moleskine.
I signed-up for WorkFlowy and created 5 lists and I think I could use this on a daily basis. Simple and to the point. Help me remember the random things that go through my head while keeping me on track to get things done.
That being said, there are a few things I'd love to see:
(a) Search
(b) Linking between items. I keep daily lists that may have sub-tasks of items that are in a larger project list. I'd like to be able to link the things in my daily list back to the project. Even if this is a full URL, I just don't want to be clicking around to find it.
(c) Mobile/iPad support (haven't tested to see if this already works or not)
"Trailer Park is the first product I have seen that is truly project management for everyone."
-Jim James, former Product Project Manager for Microsoft Project Product Management Products
Search, linking and mobile are all high on our list of things to get done soon. Mobile is definitely the hardest problem so could take the longest, but we're definitely getting on it!
* For a site that launched a few days after FireSheep was announced, and that wants me to put in (somewhat) private data, I think that at least having an SSL option is necessary.
* Re: demo page: Is it really that hard to save it tied to a temporary cookie, and copy all the data on the backend to a permanent account if a user signs up? I would not even call that a "demo page": just have the editor widget be right there on the front page, letting the user play with it (keeping the video to the side).
I understand the value of launching quickly, but adding a Gmail auth/Facebook connect option, adding an SSL option and adding better "try-before-I-have-to-give-you-my-email-address" are all things I would consider a must.
I watched the workflowy video in the article, thought "meh". Then I came back to HN to read the comments, and clicked on your app. Tried the demo, got intimidated by the interface and left. Came back to HN to read more comments, decided to check out workflowy's site afterall. A simple sign up, validation from Matt Cutts, and the fact that its a YC company persuaded me to give it a try.
tl;dr - Validation does matter. Convince the people who your target market trusts, and the rest will follow.
Just played with it. I like it, except in the 30 seconds of playing around, wasn't obvious if I'm creating a new list when I do an entry, or if an entry is a list. It's nice and snappy though.
You might want to take screenshots of a few use cases, skitch them up and post that on a more....link for those who want to learn more.
Most people don't know what an outliner is, so that's why we decided not to use it. We're really approaching it as text editor designed for lists, even though that ends up being an outliner.
For tech people, you're definitely right. For most people, this really is a new category of thing.
Tasks need to have dates I think for this thing to be both a brain organizer and a productivity tool, which I think is ultimately what it is going to have to be to be successful (and it is names workflowy).
I have used mindmaps before, which is basically the same idea with a different interface.
I'd like each node to have a "due by" or "do on" date, and maybe a simple color coding.. just a way to arbitrary label things into one of a few sets for later polling.
This is young so no one has built up huge maps of their brains and their lives, or imagine an organization using this.. it could get huge and cumbersome. To solve this you'd need to be able to pull all the 'purple' items from deep in the tree into it's own list, or get a list of everything that I said needed to be done today, or by friday.
In any case, I think this is a great tool, and I have been looking for a seamless way of keeping track of things, and this just might fit the bill. I will be giving it a try.
Curious how this is going to be monetized as well, I hope I don't get addicted and end up with another cellphone bill.
Yeah, lots of this is right on. Dates: need to do it. Taggin/Labeling and filtering is super key and one of the next big things we're going to work on.
Regarding monetization, we're thinking that we're going to have a premium option above a certain number of lists/items. We're, of course, going to grandfather in early users.
I hope that you don't sacrifice the simplicity here. Instead of actual fields or clickable options for setting tags and due dates, let me type them in and then display them as needed.
something like:
look into alternatives for GTD due 12/1/2010 [work, gtd]
Yeah, everything's going to be text editable. The twitter #hashtag model is what we'll probably follow. So if you type, say, "!" it might pull up a date picker and then when you choose the date it'll insert it in the text like !2010-10-24 (and record the metadata invisibly for sorting/filtering and whatnot).
Yes, this! Add some example lists to it, and reset it every hour or so. This way when they sign up, they don't just see an empty list, but already have ideas what to do with it.
Maybe even add some example lists for new registered user (you could use that to add a little user guide).
Small nit: In Chrome, hit the backspace a few too many times and it fired the "Back" action of the browser. Might want to override this default when in text editing mode.
This looks fantastic, with some obvious advantages over other todo list apps.
A couple of obvious todos I would like to see done before I can use it. Firstly a search throwing up a list of notes that match (browser text search is okay for this but doesn't give me a nice easy to read list).
Secondly and this one is more important, the ability to cross reference lists, for example what do I need to do today for all my projects? Search could provide a stopgap using hash tags ala twitter for tagging notes or marking dates in the interim but a formal method would probably be more convenient especially for mainstream users.
Cool, glad you like it. We're definitely adding search and tagging in the near future. We want tagging to be a first order tool for navigation just as descending the hierarchy is now.
This is awesome. I have something similar as a project on the back burner because I haven't been able to find anything really simple and generic like this. I was trying to solve simple creation of lists and the zoom in feature is exactly what I was looking for. Nice work.
Now for a tiny feature request. I like to make sections with ample white space between them. When I have an empty bullet, can you hide the bullet? Similar to what gmail tasks does.
And I want simple formatting. Textile? Markdown? Is this supported already? I just want to make junk bold and italicized. :)
I think this service could be very useful for me when transparent synchronization with mobile be ready. Evernote have not created correct two way mobile synchronization yet.
Very nice interface and website. It's sleek and uncluttered. Overall, pretty enjoyable to use.
-You need SSL. Badly.
-You need to post a privacy policy. I need some something to reassure me before I can store private information under your control.
-Public demo? A lot of people will lose interest if they have to set up an account before even coming into contact with the software. Knowcase (http://www.knowcase.com/) does a good job of providing a demo without forcing you to jump through hoops.
As is this is not very useful to me, because often dates are associated with the things you do. I want to know what has to be completed tomorrow/next week/etc. A calendar or timeline view would make this very useful. I think you might be able to do a neat calendar view that also shows the nesting, so I'd be able to see:
School: homework X, homework Y, test Z
Project A: email joe about X, implement Y
Project B: ...
I really like the app and I'm definitely going to be using it for many things from this point on, but I would use it even more if you had Collaboration. I need to be able to collaboratively edit a section of my list with my coding team. We should be able to move this section of the list where ever each of us wants it in our individual accounts.
Would that be too difficult to implement at this point?
Interesting product idea - could use a bit more explanation on the homepage (maybe a paragraph of explanatory text?), the video was nice but a bit hard to take in (fast paced, talking over music, short).
Your other video "How to use workflowy" was much easier to understand and actually convinced me to sign up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPMVtkNrquU&fmt=18 . Specifically, the part after 1:30 where you show the length of a list when it's expanded vs. when it's organized by workflowy. I usually end up with huge word documents that look like scarily similar to the sprawling, expanded list, and when you showed how the tool cuts down on that and only shows the level of detail you need, that hit home big time and made me want to try it.
Thanks, thats really useful feedback. Nice to know the main thing that persuaded you. I wonder if we could capture that in images/text somehow too, for the people who keep saying they don't want to watch a video.
No problem, glad it was helpful! The best thing for people who don't want to watch a video might be just some screenshots of the different states of the list: compacted, expanded 1-2 levels, and fully expanded with accompanying text explaining how the product works.
Another quick suggestion: "A better way to think" doesn't really convey what your product does, maybe something like: "Map your workflow to your brain, not your brain to your workflow." would work better? Something more descriptive might help people tell more quickly whether or not the product is relevant to them and worth checking out.
I really like the product. I currently use Things for my GTD, so it would be competing with that. I would have to have an iPhone app version to make the switch. The UI also lends itself to a useful project management tool, which I always thought was a space in need of some simplification.
I love the simplicity of the application! Easy to use and no complicated system to learn (which isn't the case for all the GTD apps out there...)
But there are two things I would love to see: Add an easy way to append things to the Goals list. So I could add parts of a project to my week list, and when I break it down into single tasks I could easily add the subtasks to the today list. They would have to be linked to the original item of course.
And what would also be nice (but may be outside the scope) is a way to ad recurring tasks (for example refactoring every Friday), so I don't have to remember to add it all the time to the today list.
I worry that embedding media would just overcomplicate it. There's definitely a point where it's simple enough and adding more features will only detract from the overall effectiveness.
We had embeddable media implemented but took it out because the UI wasn't right yet. We need to figure that out, but I think it is definitely important enough to work on.
Awesome. WorkFly almost mimics how I currently organize my things to do. Eschewing fancy stuff, I simply make a long indented list and cross things out as they get done. Having that capability in a browser based application is neat.
Now I do like long lists, but could I have the capability to make multiple lists? I don't want to put my personal to-do's on the same list as my work to-do.
Hi durga. Your last question is interesting, because in WorkFlowy there's not really a difference between a list and an item in a list, because both can have infinite items underneath them. It does seem to confuse people, though, so we're going to make the icons at the top level into "document" icons and see if that helps clear things up. Might slightly change the behavior too, unclear.
Exporting would be nice so that one can save the list 'snapshot'. This way we could use it to report our tasks/projects every week. My boss is using Word. It's just not efficient...
Tables are very common on my lists. Maybe you can add support for simple tables to Workflowy too.
Another suggestion: several users accessing the same Workflowy.
Their website probably got a lot hits from the curious today, since it was a hacker news front page story. I wonder how many potential users, like me, that they lost forever because because of the register-before-we-explain anti-pattern. And no, I will not unblock a video until after I am interested.
:) Yeah, we've heard that feedback loud and clear. We're going to put up some more descriptive text as soon as traffic dies down. We don't want to mess something up while people are still signing up like crazy.
We're getting amazing conversion rates, though, so most people don't have a problem watching the video.
I like it. It has the simplicity of mytextfile.com which I've been using since I saw it here on HN months ago. I was hoping I could also access it on iPad with Safari but it says no "smart phones" yet. Signing up and in with my Google account would be great.
For those that don't want to "Sign Up" here's what happens when you do: NOTHING
I never got ANYTHING in my inbox. They just use your email for a username, which I very much appreciate over any other method (creating usernames you forget, Facebook connect, OpenID, etc, etc)
It asks only for email while signing up but asks to loin with either Email/Username.
Interface looks good but even average geek will not use it for more than few days let alone average user. How do you make sure users keep using it for long time?
The name grates on my nerves (although I am aware of the URL shortage problem). But the product looks cool. I'm going to use it for a few days and see how I like it. It looks near perfect.
Also, I have no idea how this is a business, but I've resigned myself to being thoroughly confused by Valley business sense. I imagine you will be no more or less economically successful than simplenote.
As a business, I think we'll follow the lead of dropbox and evernote. Some variety of:
1) You get a lot for free.
2) If you need even more (or just love us) you can pay us (My hunch is we'll also have an easy to find "I need a lot of space but am poor." option)
3) You can always earn more space by promoting us
Also, once we have collaboration this could be a pretty powerful enterprise tool, and businesses pay lots of money for software.
I'm wondering how much you can eventually charge for a service like this, especially considering it would be fairly easy for competitors to replicate and undercut you.
org-mode Inspired I see. In a way this solves the problem org-mode has which is keeping the same list sync'd in multiple locations in a clean and straightforward way.
Did he say that some where else? I can honestly say I may have been more likely to open it up and check out the site because it's a YC company, but I am 'giving it a chance' because I don't have anything else that does this except scrap paper and issue queues and I liked how you can change what the root node is and the clever use of breadcrumbs.
That, and because it's extremely fast compared to other software. I usually tend to go with less apps, but this could be a nice addition for me. Time will tell.
I think if I use it for a week I'll be hooked. Some sort of game mechanism to get people to use it for that initial crucial time frame might be helpful.
I find it's the perfect combination. Watch the 45s video, and you know everything about the product. All that's left to do is enter an email address + password and you can start using the app.
We'll put this stuff online and put more descriptive text. Thanks for the feedback. Conversions are really good, btw, so something's working.
Regarding your specific questions:
1) "Is it online only?" You can currently edit offline and when you go back online it'll sync your changes. Don't close your browser window, though, cause it'll lose the changes. That'll be fixed soon thanks to html 5 caching.
2 & 3) "Is it free?" & "Forever?" It's going to be like Dropbox, freemium with a quota. In other words, free forever up to a certain number of lists allowed. We'll grandfather in early users.
It's a simple tool that only needs a simple explanation and simple signup box.
That said, a text explanation would make the process even faster. Also it would be interesting to see a usable mini-version of their hierarchical list right on the homepage that I could play around with before even putting in my email address.
another feature request - when i close a parent task, close out its children. or at least, prompt me if i want to do that.
make navigation into sub items respect the back button.
arrrrgh. i just back buttoned to the article, and went forward to try and find my list again, and its gone. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do today.
Hmmm, that's odd. Your changes are synced to the server every 5 seconds, and you should be notified if you have unsaved changes when you try to leave the page.
I would ask for a good mobile web version way before an App (android or iphone). If you have a good mobile web version, people can pretend it's an app, and if it works -- feel free to use PhoneGap to make a real honest-to-god app out of it.
I really want to attach screenshots to items. I'm going to use Workflowy while programming... whenever I notice a small tsak (such as refactoring a hack, reformatting some code, etc), then I'll add it as a Workflowy item.
But rather than type out an item description, it would be way easier for me to simply screenshot the code. (I do alt-printscreen, paste into MSPaint, save to dropbox, copy public link.)
Of course, each item could just be a dropbox link to the screenshot...
Um. It would be nice to attach (via upload or via link) a screenshot or PDF to certain items, but I wouldn't want to format this inline with my text. Just be able to click and view.
I definitely wouldn't want to sacrifice the simplicity and elegance of the text only view.
Nice. Yeah, attachments & embeds are going to be cool. So, sounds like for you just linking to an image plus previewing it in the display will be enough?
Sounds like you wouldn't want us to let you upload the image to our site, right?
For me, it's not necessary to upload the image to your site, no. But most of your users won't be using Dropbox... the vast majority of them wouldn't take the time to upload to some external site (e.g. ImageShack) then copy the link into the item.
That said, you likely don't need to worry about being able to upload to your site right now. Attaching an image seems like a pretty special-case thing, so you could simply support an external URL for now...
To answer your question: yes it would be ideal if I could "attach" an image URL to an item. That would then show a small ~(128px by 128px) thumbnail. Clicking on it would pop up a new tab and navigate to the image URL.
Thanks! All of this stuff is coming in some form in the near future.
As a side-note, there is "unofficial" offline access right now. All of your edits are batched up when you edit offline and will be synced with the server when you reconnect. You just can't close your browser window/tab until you reconnect.
The undelete bar thing is already fixed and will be pushed out soon.
