★ Staying Simple While Adding Features

Over Memorial Day weekend, I finally got a chance to work a little bit on the next version of do.Oh, our super simple todo list application. do.Oh quietly launched in 2006, and has been running virtually without update since then.

The tagline of do.Oh is "Now with fewer features." Our initial idea was to create a todo list that did not have the clutter of modern "task management systems" that cause you to spend more time managing tasks than actually doing things. No tags, no due dates, no calendaring, no categories, no sub-lists. You put something on your list, then you do it. That's it.

But there are a few key features we want to add! So the task has become designing an interface that allows these new (and awesome) features to live alongside the extremely simple list interface without distracting you from the tasks at hand.

Right now, we're experimenting with simple keyboard shortcuts that open up implicit information spaces that otherwise hide behind an ellipses or small button. The key is to leave the list interface mostly undisturbed until you absolutely need one of the more advanced features, at which point they appear magically before you.

Here's a screenshot of the prototype I built last night to test some ideas. The "advanced options" bubble appears around the selected task when you hit the Tab key on your keyboard. While the bubble is open, several other keyboard shortcuts become available.

- Ben Brown, May 26, 2009