How do I get users to understand that what I built is not a todo list?
I built intray so that I could use it, not with a clear business strategy in mind but with a very clear idea of what it should be.
I meet people that I think could benefit from using Intray (genuinely, it's free to use anyway) so I suggest them to do so.
Invariably, they get back to me asking why a certain anti-feature doesn't exist.
For example, listing all the items in your intray is the opposite of how an in-basket is supposed to work (it defeats the purpose).
I realised that people are trying to use it as a todo-app, and that's very much not what it is.
How do I get users to instantly understand what intray is for?
You need to understand what your users want, and build to that.
What you want actually doesn't matter as much as you are only 1 user.
If you want to build a tool for yourself, go for it. Otherwise what your users think your product does, is what it does.
Have you interviewed any of them?
A couple of points.
That's in the FAQ :(
Notes and intray Items serve a fundamentally different purpose. Intray items are meant to be short term, ephemeral and for prosessing. Notes have an indeterminate life-time and do not lend themselves well for processing. Intray incorporates the best-practices for processing and is not cluttered by unnecessary features. Moreover, Intray items will persist beyond eventual damage to your phone. This is not the case for all notes apps.
That's a really good point, thanks!
Great idea!
Thank you very much for the feedback!
A getting started guide with explanations?
I have no idea what an intray is, I do understand to-do apps and it seems like the people you tell about intray expect an to-do app.
You can spent a lot of time to try and convince people that intray is different, or you can make it look like a to do app/ link to-do app features with intray and make it useful so people will actually start using it and then discover the added value of using an 'intray'.
You don't have to create this in the same app, you could also create for example 'intray for trello' to link an intray 'box' to trello actions. Then at least the difference will be clear.
Please also realize you are biased, don't let this stand in your way when you want to create a product out of this. What you call anti-feature might actually be useful for many. (I can think of many cases where getting an overview of all items is useful), so keep an open mind.
I would try to demonstrate the benefit of a strictly enforced first-in-first-out queue of tasks. This is differentiating feature of it. For me, you need to prove true that "the processing does not allow you to see more than one item at a time, which is a proven strategy to improve your processing efficiency" given all the disadvantages of not being able to pick which task to deal with.
I like the GTD example but is it the only way to use it?
You seem to be speaking to 3 different audiences in the same text when you speak of an app, API, and CLI.
I recommend the book "The Decision Book - Fifty models for strategic thinking" by Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschappeler. Perhaps you could provide multiple guides for making the decision e.g. Eisenhower Matrix, GTD, Pareto Principle. This to me is a stronger value proposition.
Hi! Thank you for your feedback, this is really valuable to me.
A few points:
Right, is that bad? (honest question)
I'm not sure what you mean by this. What decision?
OK, but you have to deal with the piece of thought according to the GTD flowchart.
The GTD flowchart is a decision tree. Alternatives could be e.g., deciding with the Eisenhower Matrix (determine which combination of urgent/not urgent + important/not important it is, and dealing with urgent+important first, then important+not urgent).
You could give some guidance how to deal with the intray item - do it now, put it back in the intray, put it on the calendar, move to inbox, file it for reference - make the flowchart more specific to your app.
Yeah sort of bad. A non-developer would be confused by API and CLI, and open-source.
You are describing your product but you are never demonstrating it! That is why it is hard to communicate what it is about!
I immediately got that it is not exactly a to-do list but more of a personal log. You have to convince me it is a better idea than using a plain text file (or any number of similar tools I might be using already)
Thank you so much for the feedback, this is exactly what I'm looking for.
It's also definitely not a log, though.
The idea is that you empty your intray into your todo list daily. (You'd delete the items while going through them). The reason that your intray and your todo list are seperate, and you don't just put things into your todo list immediately is that your todo list requires you to think about what needs to happen with this new piece of "stuff" that you have allowed into your life.
Can you provide a link to your landing page?
Absolutely! I couldn't add the product via IH yet because it hasn't been approved. (I'm very new here.)
https://intray.eu
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