Minute

Without verification, users hit a screen explicitly saying that the app isn’t verified. They then need to click through a flow that feels like it is for advanced users in order to continue.

Now we are all set for a smoother sign in flow. All in all, the process took about 2 week and required two back-and-forths. The first time was to use the proper Google sign in button and the second was to minimize the scopes registered in the OAuth consent page.

One more step towards getting more folks onto Minute!

There is a lot going on with Minute and new users shouldn't get dropped into an empty home page & app.

So, I added in an onboarding flow to set new users up with the following:

• Account setup: users may have several google accounts to connect
• Information about each part of a note
• Information about contacts
• Have user add a few default templates so their home page has custom templates start with
• Set up daily email reminders
• Introduction to the home page
• Get the user started composing their first journal entry

Pretty excited about this -- one more step towards opening up Minute.

For new users with no templates and no calendar events, the home page is sparse and isn't very helpful for journaling.

This addition does the follow:

• Adds several default journal types: these include daily positivity, gratitude, decision, decision follow-up, food, and a cognitive journal template
• Prompts the user to add a few default templates during onboarding
• Suggests these templates on the home page

Last month, I shared v1 of the landing page and got a ton of awesome feedback. So a big hearty thank you to everyone that took the time to provide their thoughts and recommendations!

I've incorporated a bunch of the suggestions:

• Stopped convincing people to journal. I'm now targeting people who already want to journal. If visitors don't want to journal, I don't expect to convert them with this landing page.
• Focus on benefits. My original copy focused on features and what they did. I tried to focus more on user benefits this time.
• New font. I found a few paid ones I really liked but will save those for a later. For now, I like this one off Google Fonts
• New logo. Several people said it was a boring logo and I totally agreed. I like this one better, but still need to think about it.
• Removed quotes about why journaling is great. I had a bunch of quotes from famous people but realized there may be issues with using them. Plus, people who already journal don't need to be convinced
• Added a new section about templates. I'm almost done with this feature, have been using it myself, and have found it super useful.

Again, open to all feedback and suggestions:

• Can you tell what Minute is?
• Who it might be for?
• What benefit and features it has?
• If you journal regularly, or want to journal, what does and doesn't resonate?
• If you're into design, what do you think of the visual design? Font? Logo?

The new version is live:

https://www.minutehq.com

I just shipped the first real landing page for Minute. Before this, it was just a title and tagline.

Open to any and all feedback, suggestions, critique, etc.

• Can you tell what Minute is?
• Who it might be for?
• What benefits / features it has?
• If you journal regularly, or want to journal, what does and doesn't resonate?

https://www.minutehq.com/

Thanks!

Minute has become a fixture in my life, and I plan to be building and using it for a long time. So why not build in public, join the community, and have a little more social pressure to make progress? Sounds like a good idea to me :)

Also, I've been following the podcast and lurking in the community for quite a few years. I'm super excited to have a side project to share. To fill out the timeline here, I've gone through notes in Minute that are tagged with minute, and added a few of the larger features.

I've now needed search on a few occasions, and so I built out an initial implementation that searches notes as well as contacts. I can definitely dive deeper into search but for now, being able to search for keywords is super helpful. Also, searching for contacts is quicker than using the sidebar, so I removed it for the time being.

I absolutely love Superhuman and its keyboard shortcuts. A lot of Minute design is now influenced by Superhuman, and I'm really wanting hot keys to quickly move around also.

I'm not sure if these are really needed right now, but I've got time to hack over the weekend, have never built out hotkeys in an app, and want to give it a try!

I've been using Minute more and more frequently on a desktop, and its about time for a design that looks more like desktop version. For now, I've added sidebars with navigation links, tags, and a contact listing.

I'm not sure what will end up being helpful, and whether it'll make things too cluttered, but this is an initial experiment.

I'm finding myself editing the same note multiple times per day. It could be a note from an event where I add an agenda/plan and then followup thoughts. Or during an event where I continuously jot down things I'd like to remember. Its annoying to keep pressing the edit & save buttons, so now notes are always rendered in the editor and are auto-saved.

A fun implementation detail: if you load too many ckeditors at a time, it is a huge drag on perceived page load. So now notes render statically first, and then the editor gets loaded when a note appears on the screen.