Simple, Reliable, Sharable Notes

Understanding the Problem

Bill and Jordan are both avid note-takers. Like many users, they had grown frustrated with Evernote. When I joined the project, I interviewed them about the challenges they were experiencing with writing:

• Sync between devices seemed to be unreliable. Bill demonstrated scenarios examples where he would enter text on his phone, but it wouldn’t show up consistently on his laptop.

• Security was also an issue. Evernote had a policy change in 2016 that allowed employees to read user notes, which led to a backlash and eventual rollback of the policy. However, both Bill and Jordan’s trust had been eroded somewhat.

• Speed and shortcuts were lacking. As developers, both relied heavily on keyboard shortcuts and markdown formatting as part of their workflow. Both wanted to be able to navigate, type, and take actions without leaving the keyboard.

• Feature bloat was a frustration for Bill. He liked the minimalism of apps like Medium and Bear, which he felt helped focus on writing, not formatting. This was especially true for mobile, where he wanted to get in and start writing without having to tap multiple times.

Identifying User Outcomes

Amplenote was different from other projects I’d worked on. It began as an internal tool for our 40-person team and was an experiment to see how effectively these problems could be solved. If our team switched over and enjoyed using it voluntarily, we’d look to release it to the public. So while the goals were a little less formal than other Bonanza projects, we still had some agreement on user stories:

As a writer, I want to:

• Write on my computer and phone, and know that my notes will be saved

• Write quickly, without having to worry about saving and formatting

• Include footnotes, annotations, and media without leaving my workflow

• Share notes with friends and colleagues, even if they’re not signed up for Amplenote

• Make sure my notes are secure and can’t be hacked

Designing Solutions

Amplenote began as a side project with limited hours. We worked on weekly updates, which we released Fridays and presented to the team. This process allowed us to make progress and user feedback to guide decisions. This helped us validate assumptions and avoid heavy investments in features people wouldn’t like or use.

Mobile and web editors

Our first projects focused on designing the note editors for mobile and web. We wanted to keep formatting and features pretty minimal, but not hide them completely. Designing the mobile editors in parallel with the web editor helped us focus on essential features and pay close attention to how people input text in different environments.

Todo lists and Task details

Once we had the note editors in good shape, we shifted focus to todo lists. Bill and Jordan wanted to infuse the checklist items with more detail to help them plan and prioritize tasks. However, we also wanted to keep these pretty simple, so that checklists would still be easy to use no matter how much detail was entered.

We went through about 8 or 9 iterations before we found a combination that worked without being too complex. Users can include task details like due date, reminders, importance/urgency, duration, and advanced recurrence schedules. Many of the inputs were designed to support text entry using prompts and fuzzy matching. This helped to speed up entry for keyboard-only and touchscreen users.

Rich Footnotes

Rich Footnotes quickly became one of the most popular features for our team. The concept is pretty simple: users can the keyboard command for linking (cmd+k) to open a panel that includes a url, description, and image. This allows writers to add links and citations easily, and provide context quickly and concisely when sharing notes and research.

Measuring and Learning

RESULTS

• About 70% of our team members use Amplenote as their primary productivity tool, and most use it on a daily basis. Note sharing, rich footnotes, and recurring todos were three things they cited as being helpful to their workflow.

• However, most still rely on other productivity tools for specific activities. Our biggest challenge is collaboration. Sharing notes is easy, but commenting and editing in real time aren’t comparable to Google Docs.

• Feedback from beta testers about features and ease of use was also positive. Features like commenting, importing notes, and web clipping were common requests for improvement.

• The big question we have to answer is: what makes someone want to switch from Evernote or another paid tool? Beta testers gave it a warm reception, but many indicated that they weren’t sure whether they wanted to change services.

What did we learn?

• Internal testing doesn’t equal market validation. Our team provides great feedback on details, but it’s unclear whether their enthusiasm will be matched outside of our company. Productivity nerds are fairly particular, and the market is fairly competitive. We still need to demonstrate why Amplenote is the productivity app to try.

• Short cycles with regular feedback work well as design and development process. It seemed to open the door for more experimentation and helped us keep our assumptions in check. There were multiple ways to solve the same problem, and this enabled us to try different ideas with people rather than debating them privately.

• We need to do a better job helping people get started after signup. Those I spoke to liked the app, but missed many of the things that our team loved about it (todos, rich footnotes, public notes). We could make these more obvious and self-explanatory so that people can find them organically and feel comfortable trying them out.

• People really like themes and customization. We ran surveys with our team, our beta testers, and group of productivity enthusiasts. Colors, formatting, and styles were surprisingly one of the most common complaints and requests.