How Remember the Milk website could be better

So after my earlier post, I got to thinking about how to improve the Remember the Milk website. I’m talking here specifically only of the task interface. I’m not at all concerned about the other business aspects of the website (forums, billing, etc).

Things I would change on the RTM website.

First, what is the situation with the arrow on each task list? The one that seems to do nothing more than point to the very top item on any given list. Maybe i’m just missing something here but what is it doing? I can’t seem to figure out what does. Clicking on any individual item doesn’t change it. I can’t figure it out. If there’s no point (please fill me in if I’m missing something), then drop this thing.

Second, The way in which you edit todo properties is crazy. My scrolling over an item, I can see the item’s details. Great. Except when you move your mouse to click on this window, the details disappear. You learn pretty quickly that you have to click on the item in order to select it. Sure. That’s stupid but whatever. Now you can edit the properties. Great. So you edit your task and then move onto another one. Aha, you’re smarter now! You know to click on it. Oh, but now there are two items checked. What does the right hand panel refer to. Easy! Not the one that’s clicked but the one with the SMALL DOTTED LINE linking it.

You’re kidding me right? That’s the smallest indicator I could possibly think of. You could have wrapped the active row in a massive clear border. Chosen a different colour. Anything. A small dotted line is the worse possible indicator of which task the details panel connects to. Change the UI so it is OBVIOUS which task is being edited.

Third, where’s the right click option for completing tasks. This is pretty intuitive approach for me (i actually like the iPhone swip the best here but for a website, a right click menu would be nice).

Fourth, how do you see all your tasks that are due today (like on the iPhone). Oh, you click on the "Overview" link and you get your "Today", "Tomorrow" and "Overdue" filters. Great. But now how to I complete a task in the Overview task? You can click on the task which takes you back to the "Tasks" view and then go from there. Click back to the "Overview" menu to complete another task for that day. Shoot me.

There you go. Just four things that the most basic use of RTM drives me a bit crazy. The team at RTM look like a bunch of smart people and given that Emily Boyd’s bio indicates that she’s an interface designer, I am surprised at how challenging it is to use.

There’s a lot of thing that make the service worth having. They have a lot of functionality and other features and connectivity that are quite good. Their UI on the basic website is not fun however.