Back in the saddle with a new project
I took a lot of time off from Blogging over the holidays. Now, I’m back and I started a new project during the holidays: the dead simple Task Tracker.
The reason for starting this project was twofold.
- I couldn’t find an application to track my time that was easy to use and available anywhere I was.
- I wanted to learn how to use Google’s AppEngine.
Voila! The beginnings of a new project rising from the ashes of necessity. I also want to exercise some Interaction Design principles, too. Here’s a screen-shot of the results so far.
(The shot is actually an overlay of one screen on top of the other.) The project is in early alpha stages. I still need to add a lot of functionality to make it truly useful to me. However, I have hopes of making it useful to others, too. For that reason, I have created a wishlist of items that I want to add to the service along with an open invitation to all users to respond with feedback and their own items for the wishlist. You, dear reader, are welcome to use the service and include your own feedback.
The principle of this service is simple. I want to be able to quickly type in the name of the task on which I am working, without the hassle of setting it up ahead of time and without the hassle of creating projects and sub-projects. I want to be able to see how long I spent on a particular task throughout the day, tracking distractions, etc.
The alpha phase of this service allows me to do just that. However, I want to tag certain tasks with various tags and see how much time totals up for a tag, too. I need to be able to correct typos, delete events and all kinds of other things. There is a lot more to do than has been done. So far it is a labor of love, I hope I can see it through.
What are the design principles you ask? Well, the primo principle is simplicity. Let me know how I score on that in the comments.