While the marketing name would have “for the Web” in it, the application needed to represent the core values of OmniFocus, even in light of the limited feature set, the platform was irrelevant. We just use apps now and they work on a variety of screen sizes. I asserted that the idea of distinct web, mobile and desktop apps was no longer relevant. During a design meeting, I asked the team to define a “web” app.
![omnifocus website omnifocus website](https://inside.omnifocus.com/assets/img/gtd-inbox.png)
My RoleĪt the beginning of the design process, several team members thought that OmniFocus for the Web should function like a web app and many ideas were floated that did not feel like OmniFocus. This decision was supported by my research finding that most customers just wanted OmniFocus bare essentials on their non-Apple device. Forecast, Custom Perspectives and the much-lauded Review feature were not included. This was an incredibly hard decision made based on the number of developers we could commit to the project and our two-year time frame to ship the product.įor V1, we choose to include Inbox, Projects, Tags and Flagged perspectives. With V1 of OmniFocus for the Web not launching as a standalone application, we decided to forgo many powerful features of OmniFocus. Provide only the core OmniFocus experience
#Omnifocus website for mac#
This decision meant that OmniFocus for the Web customers would need to download OmniFocus for Mac or iOS to subscribe to the application. While we thought that this was not an ideal solution and expected that it would be necessary to make OmniFocus for the Web a standalone product at some point, we were able to justify the initial decision, since 73% of non-Apple device users used iPhones and 82% used iPhones and/or iPads. It would require OmniFocus for iOS or Mac to work. OmniFocus for the Web would not be a standalone appĭue to the challenges of getting the Omni Sync Server, our bespoke syncing solution for OmniFocus, to work with a web client, we decided that OmniFocus for the Web would not be a standalone application. Therefore, we decided to pursue a web-based OmniFocus to reach the largest group of customers. While we did have several feature requests for OmniFocus on Android, there were many more non-Apple device requests. Once these three solutions were approved, we finalized the application feature set to include: Desktop-centric designīased on our research findings, we choose to forgo a responsive design. I proposed three solutions to get the OmniFocus for the web ball rolling a limited version one (V1) feature set for non-Apple device requests, a new dev-ops engineer to oversee backend infrastructure construction and a product developer addition to my team. One group with available resources was my website development team. With four products in active development on two or more Apple platforms, our application development resources were stretched thin. We then took into account our limited resources.
![omnifocus website omnifocus website](https://2672686a4cf38e8c2458-2712e00ea34e3076747650c92426bbb5.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/2019-05-26-22-31-09.jpeg)
After reaching out to many of these customers, we discovered that OmniFocus on the iPhone, while powerful, didn’t provide a strong enough user experience for daily use. We discovered that this customer segment had an iPhone usage rate of 73% and we were curious why these users did not simply use OmniFocus on mobile devices at work. The majority of these use cases came from working professionals.
#Omnifocus website Pc#
My analysis revealed that most requests came from current customers who were forced, for various reasons, to use a non-Apple desktop computer and who needed access to OmniFocus in a PC environment. Utilizing our internal bug and feedback tools, I researched what customers wanted most from a web-based OmniFocus app.
![omnifocus website omnifocus website](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GrAB7KK_uxo/maxresdefault.jpg)
This was our first application that was not developed for an Apple platform. I worked with our CEO to design a plan to bring OmniFocus for the Web to market within two years. OmniFocus was only available on Apple platforms at that point and many customers wanted to use it on non-Apple devices. For four years, the most requested feature in our internal bug-tracking database was OmniFocus for the Web.