If you sync your lists to a Mac, be sure to try a new Mac app called JustNotes. Less full-featured than Notational Velocity, but with a much better interface design, it should appeal to every Mac user who wants to access their Listary lists on their computer. Try it out.
Hello anonymous nice person! We’ll answer your questions.
Is there a desktop client?
No, there’s not an official Listary client. However, we’ve made the syntax as simple as possible so that you can use your lists even in other apps which sync with Simplenote. If you’re on a Mac, we like nvALT, based on Notational Velocity. If you’re using Windows, we’ve heard good things about ResophNotes. You can find more apps in our FAQ.
Is it possible to print the lists?
Not in the app itself. Here are a few ways to do that:
Not a question:
Customer service seems to be of the utmost importance to you which is extremely refreshing and almost non-existent with many developers. Reading your blog makes me want to buy whatever you’re selling!
It is, thank you very much for the kind words.
Unfortunately, that’s not possible at the moment. But this is something people have requested a lot, so it’s definitely coming in the next update.
Today, May 4th, is Listary’s first anniversary, and to celebrate, we’ve decided to make it available for free just for the day. It’s the first time we make any kind of promotion, so it’s also gonna be an opportunity to learn about the impact of these kinds of promotions. Expect a post with conclusions in a few weeks.
However, we know that some people may only check the promotion news after it ends, so we’re gradually going back to our regular price of $2.99, increasing $1 per day until Monday:
As usual, feel free to send us questions and feature requests, and if you like Listary, tell your friends about the promotion. Now it’s time for a slice of cake and some drinks!
We’ve updated Listary to version 1.1.2, introducing two small features that will appeal to Due and Launch Center users. It also fixes bugs and improves overall stability.
We’ve added reminders support to Listary, using the very nice Due for the purpose. If you have Due installed, you’ll see a new toolbar icon in the item detail screen.
Here’s how it works:
To make Listary work nicely with Launch Center, we’ve added a custom listary:// URL scheme to Listary. For now, it simply opens the app.
Listary 1.1 is now available on the App Store. It took us quite a while to get it done, but it’s here and we’re really happy about it.
The biggest news of this update must be the new Sharing feature. It’s a big feature, and it’s great for sharing grocery lists with the people you live with, work to-do lists with your team, preparing a party with friends, and much more.
Here’s the complete rundown of what’s new and changed in 1.1:
There are three new preferences too:
We struggled hard to make the app more flexible and powerful while keeping it really simple, and we think we’ve achieved a good balance. We hope you like it too.
In addition to these changes, we’ve redesigned our website, removing lots of text, adding more screenshots and a few reviews too.
On Episode 46 of the Build & Analyze podcast1, Marco Arment talked a bit about beta testing and how hard it is to find good beta testers who give great feedback.
Beta testing isn’t something that we usually see other developers openly talking about, and our experience is very different from Marco’s, for the better. What follows is the story of how we approached beta testing from the beginning.
We immediately knew that we didn’t want everyone testing the app. I tend to sign up for beta testing when developers publicly ask for testers, but I’m a terrible tester. Like most people, I just want to see the shiny new stuff. We didn’t want that for Listary. We wanted good, frequent feedback, and we felt that our chances would improve if we hand-picked our testers and invited them one by one. That’s what we did. It probably created a lot less buzz than publicly asking for a huge number of testers, but it payed off in the end.
We wanted some of our testers to be close friends, because we’re comfortable with calling or meeting them out of nowhere to ask for feedback. Besides seeing the app simply as users, most of these friends were developers or designers and could give feedback about what could be improved, not only what was broken.
We also wanted more people from the industry that weren’t close friends and whose work we greatly admired, people who knew a lot more than ourselves and could teach us how to do things better. We were just starting and had virtually no “name” in the community, so it would be hard to get everyone to accept.
We didn’t have any other choice, so we wrote custom emails to each person we wanted to invite, knowing that it wouldn’t be so easy as asking friends. Some people didn’t answer back, some did but were too busy to test another app, and some accepted. This will always happen, and there’s no reason to be annoyed.
We learned that it works best with people you feel will like the app even before trying it. There’s no way to know this for sure, but a little research helps. This is how we got Craig Mod to help us. I had been following Craig’s work for a long time, and four months before the beta testing started, when Listary wasn’t even a working prototype, he tweeted:
Any suggestions for simple todo apps that cloud sync (iOS<>desktop)? Simplenote doesn’t cut it. I like tapping boxes to check things off.
We saved that for later, and when the time came, we emailed him something along the lines “We made the app you asked for, wanna test it?”. Who would say no to that?
We also kept an eye on the people who replied to him expressing the same wish, and we searched Twitter frequently for terms such as simplenote lists or iphone lists app. Sadly, we didn’t find many people, but it may work better for you, depending on the app.
Once everyone was on board, we told them it was extremely important for us to get honest feedback, and it would be perfectly OK if they hated the app. It’s very important receive we’re-not-afraid-to-hurt-your-feelings opinions. It’s not usual because people don’t like to be rude, but it’s the best way to learn.
With each update, instead of just writing the changelog, we wrote them nice emails regarding what had changed and why, what we were unsure about, and what was still in progress. We feel this encouraged people to reply with their opinions, and that’s exactly what happened.
We got amazing feedback from these people. Seriously, incredible feedback. This is where our experience completely differs from Marco Arment.
We exchanged long back and forth emails about the placement of the buttons, their icons and meaning. Thanks to the feedback we got, we dramatically improved the experience for new users, and simplified the item detail screen. What is now an obvious “Add Items” screen wasn’t so obvious back then. Our testers noticed things that were misaligned by one single pixel. We even received multiple mockups with different layout possibilities for every screen in the app.
We couldn’t ask for more.
These people, with their keen eye for detail and perfection, spent their time to help us, and we’re thankful. We did a bunch of things really well, but it was them who forced us to go the extra mile. For us, they were our first users too, and interacting with them was also our first experience with customer support.
We can’t know for sure what would happen had we proceeded differently, but we learned a bunch of things with all of this.
Testing shouldn’t end after the app has launched. When we started working on version 1.1, we removed a few testers and added a bunch of new ones. This time, it was so much easier — we simply asked existing users if they wanted to test the app, most of them industry people as well. And the feedback continues to be awesome as always.
Beta testing doesn’t need to be a pain. It was a fundamental step in the development of Listary, and a great way to meet very nice people and learn with them. It was also an opportunity to practice our customer support skills. Just try to understand what people like and don’t like, and be nice. Oh, and use TestFlight, of course.
We’d like to see more developers sharing their own experience. We want to learn and improve our beta testing. If you’re a developer, get in touch and tell us what worked and didn’t work for you. Thanks.
Hosted by Dan Benjamin and Marco Arment on 5by5. Highly recommended if you’re not listening yet. Their other shows are top-notch as well. ↩
You’re in the supermarket you usually go to, getting groceries for the week. You’re rushing through the aisles comparing prices, looking at your watch, keeping an eye on the cart, looking at your watch, reading your shopping list and looking at your watch again because it’s getting late and you’re just halfway through it.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, one employee comes by. He goes:
Here’s an idea: stop everything you’re doing right now, and go tell everyone what you think about us. Maybe on that giant board over there that everyone can see? Write a couple sentences, and rate us from 0 to 5. Then you can continue what you’re doing. It’ll only take you five minutes or so. Is that OK?
I’d make a bet that most people would think or say something along these lines:
Are you nuts? It’s not enough for you that I’m paying for all this stuff, thus keeping your business going, so you’re interrupting me for that? Listen, I really like this supermarket, and that’s why I keep coming here, but that’s a bit too much. I’ll do it if I want to. Now please let me go back to my shopping, will you?
Did that ever happen to you? I guess not. Now switch the supermarket for an app, and the employee for a prompt to rate the app. Did that ever happen to you? I bet so.
In Listary, we don’t interrupt our users to show them a dialog asking them to rate our app on the App Store. We won’t ever do. If you want to rate us, it helps, thank you very much. To help you do that, there’s a little button, deep down in the settings, that you can tap to be sent to the App Store where you can rate the app. But interrupting you to do that? Never. Interrupting people is wrong. It’s a lack of respect, and it shows what really matters to you.
In the supermarket, in an app, or anywhere else, interrupting is getting in the way of what you’re doing. And we don’t know anything about what you’re doing at one time. You may be enjoying your time, doing nothing on a lazy sunday, but you may as well be in a rush and need to quickly jot down a to-do. Suddenly, something pops up. What happened? Did something break in the app? What serious software cataclysm just happened that requires my immediate and exclusive attention? Well, it’s just that we — the guys who did the app you already paid for — want you to do a little extra for us. No biggie. Rate us. Spend your time typing deciding how much you like our app. The same app that just got in your way. Why? Because we’re asking you to stop what you’re doing to do just that, that’s why.
This situation is ridiculous. It makes absolutely no sense. You’ve paid for our app. You deserve to be treated with respect. You should only be interrupted if a decision from you is absolutely necessary for the app to continue running properly.1 That’s what a good product does. It helps you do the things you want to do. It provides a good experience. It gets out of your way. It doesn’t bother you with things you don’t really want to know or care about.
Aza Raskin once said:
Every time you make the user make a decision they don’t care about, you have failed as a designer.
If we added one of these dialogs, it’s likely that some people would rate the app. Some wouldn’t, but wouldn’t get pissed off either. Some would. We don’t know. But we don’t really want to know either. What we know is that we care about the experience our users have. We want it to be outstanding. We want to make a excellent product that they’re happy to have spent their money on, and we feel that it’s not correct to ask for anything more in return.
Marco Arment, from Instapaper, wrote about this issue:
When someone has spent $4.99 for my app, they’re entitled to a hassle-free experience. I wouldn’t feel right shoving a dialog box in their face a few days later asking for a time-consuming favor when they’re trying to read.
People who feel that great about having bought the app are the ones who tell their friends, or the internet public, to go buy it for themselves. And that’s far better for my sales than any App Store review will ever be. […]
Creating more of those devoted customers by giving them a great product is a far better investment in your app’s future than annoying and interrupting them with a dialog that makes you appear cheap and desperate.
We think ratings are very important. But when you put this desperate need for ratings above the quality of the experience you’re selling, it shows what it really matters to you, and that’s not making an excellent product.
Make excellent things, the rest will follow. It may be a naive idea, but that’s what we believe in.
In Listary, it only happens when your Simplenote username and/or password changed and the app can’t authenticate anymore. ↩
Dan, thanks for your question. We get that one a lot.
We chose Simplenote in the first place not only because it supports syncing, but also because it supports note sharing — in our case, list sharing. Plus, it has a web interface.
Going back to your question, yes, we’re strongly considering Dropbox syncing in a future update, in addition to Simplenote. Dropbox is hugely popular, and we found out that some people like their notes in text files on their computer, not just “on the cloud”. However, if and when we add that support, if you choose Dropbox syncing instead of Simplenote syncing, you won’t be able to share lists with other users.
Daniel Burka was on the latest Design Chat episode, where he answered the question “Any mobile apps you’ve been inspired by recently?”
I should really like Listary. It’s these European guys, who are making Listary. And it’s this really… I’ve used a bunch of to-do apps, it’s basically just a bunch of to-do lists, but most of them are way over-thought.
People are unwilling to make something that’s just simple, and these guys seem focused. Chose, you know, a few basic features, and were ballsy enough to stick with those basic features. I think it’s a really well designed app, and they’re doing some nice iterative improvements to it.
We’re really proud to have inspired Daniel with our app. For those who don’t know him, he’s co-founder of Milk Inc, designer at Glitch and ex-creative director at Digg.
You can listen to this and other episodes at designchat.info.
