User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

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User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Thu Sep 10, 2015 9:40 am

This topic is to discuss the user satisfaction survey and its results which we published in our newsletter and will publish soon on the blog.
Please write your comments below!
Alex
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby dpaner » Thu Sep 10, 2015 1:55 pm

have to say that this is one of the best survey/feedback/conclusion/action examples I've seen. Very well done!
- dan
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby Thomas Lohrum » Thu Sep 10, 2015 7:24 pm

Hi Alex,

thanks for sharing your survey results. Excellent done.

2. Use Cases

Yes improving Tasks/Todo-management is something i had often asked for myself. The "Tudumo" software has a simple but efficient way of handling getting-things-done (gtd) tasks. You might want to have a look at it.


3. Strong and Weak Points

Imo, the docs are great. However the visual presentation is a mess.

As for the UI the most desired item i ask for is http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/3218-three-frame-view-window-layout-with-tags-titles-and-note-content/. It might also offer an easy way to implement inline editing.

5. Most wanted

Note version history is something i personally like quite a lot. However i agree there are other features more popular.

As for CN's version i'd say make file&image attachments version 3.0 and the UI changes a 4.0. Think big :)

Thomas
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby ChrisCN » Fri Sep 11, 2015 7:01 am

Hi

I think the survey was well done and interesting - thanks for sharing the results.
I do find most of my own needs reflected in your conclusions.

Maybe in some way not 'mainstream' are three of my requests:

I do prefer inline images over attachments
(that's because I save more than one image per note and those images relate to a certain paragraphs within the note)

and I do prefer encryption of individual notes over encryption of the whole database
(that's because I don't access those sensitive information often
so I want to work most of the time without the burden of password/encryption)

and as I am a very visual guy I miss "colored tags"
http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/143 ... ored-tags/
may in version 4.0 ;-)

But I can accept that other have other priorities and CintaNotes is FANTASTIC :D
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby usbpoweredfridge » Fri Sep 11, 2015 12:23 pm

ChrisCN wrote:I do prefer inline images over attachments
(that's because I save more than one image per note and those images relate to a certain paragraphs within the note)


Inline images are the thing I am hoping to see the most, now that we have attachments :) Attachments can substitute in the meantime, but sometimes the position of an image with regards to particular bits of text can make readability of a note so much better and easier.

ChrisCN wrote:and I do prefer encryption of individual notes over encryption of the whole database
(that's because I don't access those sensitive information often
so I want to work most of the time without the burden of password/encryption)


I asked Alex about this a while back - he said that individual note encryption was more difficult than full DB encryption, in the sense of things like 'How is SimpleNote sync handled when individual notes in the DB are encrypted' etc

Chris
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Sun Sep 13, 2015 9:58 am

dpaner wrote:have to say that this is one of the best survey/feedback/conclusion/action examples I've seen. Very well done!

Dan, thanks a lot!
Alex
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Sun Sep 13, 2015 10:03 am

Hi Thomas,

Thomas Lohrum wrote:Yes improving Tasks/Todo-management is something i had often asked for myself. The "Tudumo" software has a simple but efficient way of handling getting-things-done (gtd) tasks. You might want to have a look at it.

I will, thanks for the tip.

Imo, the docs are great. However the visual presentation is a mess.

You mean the visual presenation of the docs? Is there something wrong?
Recently we moved the docs to the Wordpress platform, there might be some issues. Would be grateful for reports.

As for the UI the most desired item i ask for is http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/3218-three-frame-view-window-layout-with-tags-titles-and-note-content/. It might also offer an easy way to implement inline editing.

I agree it would be useful, but at the same time I'm afraid it will make CintaNotes way too Evernote-like.
Would it be better to have real in-place editing, directly in the list?

Note version history is something i personally like quite a lot. However i agree there are other features more popular.

I'm also monitoring which features listed in the "SHOULDN'T" section will get the most "oh no, not this one!" feedback :)

As for CN's version i'd say make file&image attachments version 3.0 and the UI changes a 4.0. Think big :)

We would, but I already promised several times that CN 3.0 will have an updated look. Don't want to go back on my word, even though CN 2.9.5 would in fact be a major release.
Alex
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Sun Sep 13, 2015 10:08 am

Hi Chris,
ChrisCN wrote:I think the survey was well done and interesting - thanks for sharing the results.
I do find most of my own needs reflected in your conclusions.

Glad that you liked it, thanks!

Maybe in some way not 'mainstream' are three of my requests:
I do prefer inline images over attachments
(that's because I save more than one image per note and those images relate to a certain paragraphs within the note)

I know, I know. But implementing this with our current richt text component (richedit) will be a world of pain and bugs.

and I do prefer encryption of individual notes over encryption of the whole database
(that's because I don't access those sensitive information often
so I want to work most of the time without the burden of password/encryption)

Duly noted! You're not the first one who is telling about the importance of this feature btw.

and as I am a very visual guy I miss "colored tags"
http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/143 ... ored-tags/
may in version 4.0 ;-)

Maybe ;) personally I also like the idea of mutually-exclusive child tags (for example for statuses etc), and since it would make sense to make such tags visually distinctive, maybe we'll combine these two ideas into one, what do you think?

But I can accept that other have other priorities and CintaNotes is FANTASTIC :D

Thanks :)
Alex
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Sun Sep 13, 2015 10:15 am

Hi Chris,

Inline images are the thing I am hoping to see the most, now that we have attachments :) Attachments can substitute in the meantime, but sometimes the position of an image with regards to particular bits of text can make readability of a note so much better and easier.


What if we'd add ability to insert links to attached images into text?

I asked Alex about this a while back - he said that individual note encryption was more difficult than full DB encryption, in the sense of things like 'How is SimpleNote sync handled when individual notes in the DB are encrypted' etc


Yes, encypted in this way notes won't be readable on mobile devices, at least not before we intrduce our own mobile client apps. Even attachmens now won't be available outside of CintaNotes because of security considerations.
Alex
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby usbpoweredfridge » Sun Sep 13, 2015 10:29 am

CintaNotes Developer wrote:What if we'd add ability to insert links to attached images into text?


Ooh, now that could be interesting - I hadn't actually considered doing it that way! Yes, I think that could work - there would just need to be some thought put into how it was going to work. For example, some ways:
-hyperlink style (eg you could treat a specific word like a hyperlink, that when clicked, would open the linked image)
-icon style (eg instead of treating a word as a hyperlink, you would show a small icon next to a word, that when clicked, would open the linked image - the icon would have to be small though as otherwise it would throw out the formatting, especially the vertical, like smilies do on forums powered by the Invision Power Board software)
-etc

I'd be keen to give this a go though. I do recognise that there are some potential issues with true (ie shown as an image) inline images - scaling for example. In a word processor document (a frequent source of inlined images), this is not such a big issue, as typically you will have the word processor open full screen and any inlined image will be relatively large. However, due to CN's small edit windows, an inlined image would be considerably smaller - in some cases, probably too small to see anything useful.

I suppose the advantage of a hyperlink style would be that you could use it for non-file links, such as true internet links. At the moment, if I have a document with a link to Google in it, I typically have to create it like this:
blah blah blah Google (http://www.google.com/)

It would be nice to be able to create it like this instead:
blah blah blah Google

Chris
Last edited by usbpoweredfridge on Sun Sep 13, 2015 10:40 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby Thomas Lohrum » Sun Sep 13, 2015 10:36 am

CintaNotes Developer wrote:
Thomas Lohrum wrote:Imo, the docs are great. However the visual presentation is a mess.
You mean the visual presenation of the docs? Is there something wrong?Recently we moved the docs to the Wordpress platform, there might be some issues. Would be grateful for reports.

Ok, i haven't checked lately. I did now. It's fine. However, my concern is in the fluent layout having one large text, even though we can navigate using the items on the left. Personally i prefer a presentation, which will show me only the relevant help for a selected issue.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:
Thomas Lohrum wrote:As for the UI the most desired item i ask for is http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/3218-three-frame-view-window-layout-with-tags-titles-and-note-content/. It might also offer an easy way to implement inline editing.
I agree it would be useful, but at the same time I'm afraid it will make CintaNotes way too Evernote-like. Would it be better to have real in-place editing, directly in the list?

I don't care what Evernote might look the same, or Thunderbird, or anything else. Three-pane-view is simply a very efficient way of presenting data. About inline editing i am not sure. For example it will have issues regarding the width, whereas with three-pane-view on a large monitor, you'll have plenty of space.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:
Thomas Lohrum wrote:As for CN's version i'd say make file&image attachments version 3.0 and the UI changes a 4.0. Think big :)
We would, but I already promised several times that CN 3.0 will have an updated look. Don't want to go back on my word, even though CN 2.9.5 would in fact be a major release.

You promised the new UI as a major release, right? ;) Well, 4.0 is a major release. Aside from this you will get in trouble for sure! Experience tell's us there is only .6,.7,8.,.9 for interims releases. And who knows, when the new ui will be finished for sure? Also the file & image attachments feature deserves a better release than x.x.5.

Thomas
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby Thomas Lohrum » Sun Sep 13, 2015 10:41 am

CintaNotes Developer wrote:
and as I am a very visual guy I miss "colored tags"
http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/143 ... ored-tags/may in version 4.0 ;-)
Maybe ;) personally I also like the idea of mutually-exclusive child tags (for example for statuses etc), and since it would make sense to make such tags visually distinctive, maybe we'll combine these two ideas into one, what do you think?

Since both are properties of (sub) tags it might make sense, even though this is their only relationship. How hard is this feature to implement?

Thomas
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby ChrisCN » Mon Sep 14, 2015 6:11 am

CintaNotes Developer wrote:
and as I am a very visual guy I miss "colored tags"
http://roadmap.cintanotes.com/topic/143 ... ored-tags/
may in version 4.0 ;-)
Maybe ;) personally I also like the idea of mutually-exclusive child tags (for example for statuses etc), and since it would make sense to make such tags visually distinctive, maybe we'll combine these two ideas into one, what do you think?
If you could combine both enhancements, I wouldn't complain ;)

CintaNotes Developer wrote:What if we'd add ability to insert links to attached images into text?
That would be a compromise I would vote for.
For me this would mean we reach about 80% of what I would really like to see happen one day (inline images) while simple attachments reach only 10%. So for me this would be a big step in the right direction.
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Fri Sep 18, 2015 9:07 am

usbpoweredfridge wrote:Ooh, now that could be interesting - I hadn't actually considered doing it that way! Yes, I think that could work - there would just need to be some thought put into how it was going to work. For example, some ways:
-hyperlink style (eg you could treat a specific word like a hyperlink, that when clicked, would open the linked image)
-icon style (eg instead of treating a word as a hyperlink, you would show a small icon next to a word, that when clicked, would open the linked image - the icon would have to be small though as otherwise it would throw out the formatting, especially the vertical, like smilies do on forums powered by the Invision Power Board software)


Thanks for your input! Yes, it'll probably have to be a simple hyperlink style, at least in the initial implementation.
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Fri Sep 18, 2015 9:10 am

Thomas Lohrum wrote:Ok, i haven't checked lately. I did now. It's fine. However, my concern is in the fluent layout having one large text, even though we can navigate using the items on the left. Personally i prefer a presentation, which will show me only the relevant help for a selected issue.

You mean that you'd prefer if help was divided into several pages, one for each section?

I don't care what Evernote might look the same, or Thunderbird, or anything else. Three-pane-view is simply a very efficient way of presenting data. About inline editing i am not sure. For example it will have issues regarding the width, whereas with three-pane-view on a large monitor, you'll have plenty of space.

The idea is that inline editing is for quick text entry/fixing. For anything more complex than that you're supposed to open the note in the editor.

You promised the new UI as a major release, right? ;) Well, 4.0 is a major release. Aside from this you will get in trouble for sure! Experience tell's us there is only .6,.7,8.,.9 for interims releases. And who knows, when the new ui will be finished for sure? Also the file & image attachments feature deserves a better release than x.x.5.

I agree. Probably we'll do it this way. There's an option for releasing it as 2.10 as well, but it will mess up file sorting order ;)
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Fri Sep 18, 2015 9:12 am

Thomas Lohrum wrote:Since both are properties of (sub) tags it might make sense, even though this is their only relationship. How hard is this feature to implement?

I'd say its of "medium" complexity, can be finished in 1 month.
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Fri Sep 18, 2015 9:13 am

ChrisCN wrote:For me this would mean we reach about 80% of what I would really like to see happen one day (inline images) while simple attachments reach only 10%. So for me this would be a big step in the right direction.


Great to hear. And since implementing this is about 10 times easier than implementing "true" inline images, I'd say this is the way to go.
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby usbpoweredfridge » Fri Sep 18, 2015 11:01 am

CintaNotes Developer wrote:Thanks for your input! Yes, it'll probably have to be a simple hyperlink style, at least in the initial implementation.


Yeah, I think that would be the best way to do it.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:Great to hear. And since implementing this is about 10 times easier than implementing "true" inline images, I'd say this is the way to go.


I think it is a good example too of the 'not quite the feature I wanted originally but it will still give me a way to do what I want' situation. An example of this is the attachments feature. One thing I really badly wanted in CN was URL capture (roadmap link). In short, given the following example text, CN does not capture the URL:
test test test google test

Which means that nearly every time I captured something from a webpage - which was the bulk of my text capturing - I had to manually insert links into the captured text, eg:
test test test google (http://www.google.com) test

On pages with multiple links - ie most of them - this was (and still is) a lot of work. Because of the extra work, I had largely stopped capturing from websites, and was using CN as a simple Notepad replacement, just for notes I would type in myself (which was not really making use of most of its capabilities). At least now with attachments, what I can do is to save the page in my web browser, and simply attach the saved html file (MHT format specifically) to a CN note. This way, the links are preserved and I don't have to do any extra work.

There is a downside to this approach though - apart from CN having to launch another program to view the content when I double click it (which is a minor annoyance) and the slightly increased database size (also another minor annoyance). Using attachments, I will no longer be able to search the text I captured unless CN gets an option to search within attachments as well (obviously when you text capture into a note, you can simply search the text). The workaround for the lost ability to search is careful titling of the note, and careful use of tags. Not ideal (CN's search function is really quite good), but I hope to be able to make it work (I have a few hundred webpages saved to my hard drive which I intend to process in this manner - I've saved them up and have been waiting for the attachment feature to appear).

Anyway, just a little anecdote there - the alternative proposed is not true inline images, but I believe I will be satisfied with it.

Chris
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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby Thomas Lohrum » Sun Sep 20, 2015 8:01 pm

CintaNotes Developer wrote:
Thomas Lohrum wrote:Ok, i haven't checked lately. I did now. It's fine. However, my concern is in the fluent layout having one large text, even though we can navigate using the items on the left. Personally i prefer a presentation, which will show me only the relevant help for a selected issue.
You mean that you'd prefer if help was divided into several pages, one for each section?

Yes.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:
Thomas Lohrum wrote:I don't care what Evernote might look the same, or Thunderbird, or anything else. Three-pane-view is simply a very efficient way of presenting data. About inline editing i am not sure. For example it will have issues regarding the width, whereas with three-pane-view on a large monitor, you'll have plenty of space.
The idea is that inline editing is for quick text entry/fixing. For anything more complex than that you're supposed to open the note in the editor.

Thanks for your clarification. Opening up the note in an editor for "true" editing is fine, just as it is with Outlook or Thunderbird. Still reading a note in a three-pane-view style will help me a lot, when i need to check a group of notes that i have searched for.

CintaNotes Developer wrote:
Thomas Lohrum wrote:You promised the new UI as a major release, right? ;) Well, 4.0 is a major release. Aside from this you will get in trouble for sure! Experience tell's us there is only .6,.7,8.,.9 for interims releases. And who knows, when the new ui will be finished for sure? Also the file & image attachments feature deserves a better release than x.x.5.
I agree. Probably we'll do it this way. There's an option for releasing it as 2.10 as well, but it will mess up file sorting order ;)

Yes. 2.10 will mess it up with no doubt.

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Re: User Satisfaction Survey Discussion

Postby CintaNotes Developer » Mon Sep 21, 2015 10:46 am

I think it is a good example too of the 'not quite the feature I wanted originally but it will still give me a way to do what I want' situation.

Yes, exactly.

At least now with attachments, what I can do is to save the page in my web browser, and simply attach the saved html file (MHT format specifically) to a CN note. This way, the links are preserved and I don't have to do any extra work.

This still resembles a kludge.
Ideally, CN should automatically parse the page, leave links in their place, and download and attach images which were selected with the text.
This is our goal, and we'll be working towards it. It seems that it should greatly simplify your workflow.
Alex

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