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New Product Alert: Debrief
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
May 8, 2007 at 01:33 PM
Like you, one of the first things I do when I investiage a new piece of software is check out the screenshots on the web site. And I agree that the screen shots on the Debrief site are woefully inadequate. It looks to me like they are using the same screenshots they created for their help document for the web site.
I had no trouble installing the software on my computer, and I have not noticed a lot of mispellings or typgraphical errors in the popups or help documentation, though I have no doubt they are there. An abundance of these mistakes does undermine ones confidence in a program, especially when the software producer is writing in his or her own language. But, as I said, I haven’t notice a lot of these yet.
As for there being a lot of buttons on the screen, you can turn some of these features off to reduce the clutter a little bit. However, I don’t find the screen all that cluttered… to me the GUI of Debrief is a lot more “tidy” than UltraRecall… admittedly a subjective assessment.
For anyone still interested in Debrief, I can say this so far: This is not the program to replace an information capturing program such as UR or Zoot… it just doesn’t have the tools for gathering lots of different information from many sources. But if you build your own information through capturing of your own thoughts, todos, contacts, etc… Debrief is worth a look.
Steve Z.
Posted by Bob Mackreth
May 8, 2007 at 08:27 PM
I installed the program without any difficulty, and have played with it just a little.
My first impression is that Debrief appears to be a reasonably powerful program for its low price—I was especially attracted by the “card deck” concept—but that the interface and some of the program features are overly complicated.
The profusion of toolbar icons seems to stem from a deliberate decision to “minimize the number of mouse clicks” needed to use the program. This may be an admirable goal, but the result here is a visual mishmosh. Worst of all is the way the toolbars change as you perform different tasks within the program- for example, as you move from Todo List to Calendar, the Bold-Italic-Underline buttons move across the screen. That’s just poor design..
And yes, one can disable some functions to reduce the icon clutter, but there does not seem to be a complete range of menu bar items to substitute for toolbar icons. (eg text format effects). So if you want a simpler toolbar, you have to give up features.
In the end, between usability issues and a learning curve that appears to be unnecessarily steep, my initial response is unenthusiastic. Too bad, because there seem to be some genuinely good ideas here.
Posted by Stephen R. Diamond
Jun 22, 2007 at 10:55 PM
Bob Mackreth wrote:
>The
>profusion of toolbar icons seems to stem from a deliberate decision to “minimize the
>number of mouse clicks” needed to use the program. This may be an admirable goal, but
>the result here is a visual mishmosh. Worst of all is the way the toolbars change as you
>perform different tasks within the program- for example, as you move from Todo List to
>Calendar, the Bold-Italic-Underline buttons move across the screen. That’s just
>poor design..
Maybe it’s a poor design choice - but a choice it is, not a blind blunder. Personally, I’m impressed with this innovation. The toolbar buttons on the first row remain unchanged, but the buttons on the second row change with the the module presented. That displays a greater number of relevant buttons than keeping buttons constant, and it keeps irrelevant buttons out of the way, but the price is that items appears on the second row in two different modules, they will sometimes appear in different positions. There is no way around this unfortunate side effect of the design choice. To me it is minor.
There is even a reason for the crowded appearance. Ordinarily buttons are spaced comfortably apart, and when a window is compact, the icons roll off. The buttons are crowded together, because they are intended to all appear even at small window sizes. Make your window big, and the buttons are all on one side.
The trade offs—aesthetics and learning curve because of the number of independent feature—-are worth it or not depending on how one values what’s being traded. Reducing clicks is not a big deal in a word processor, where you are mostly typing rather than mousing. The more time you have to spend clicking in a program, by its nature, the more valuable becomes the objective of reducing clicks.
>And yes, one can disable some functions to reduce the icon clutter,
>but there does not seem to be a complete range of menu bar items to substitute for
>toolbar icons. (eg text format effects). So if you want a simpler toolbar, you have to
>give up features.
>
>In the end, between usability issues and a learning curve that
>appears to be unnecessarily steep, my initial response is unenthusiastic. Too bad,
>because there seem to be some genuinely good ideas here.
Posted by Bob Mackreth
Jun 23, 2007 at 03:07 AM
Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>
>
>Bob Mackreth wrote:
>>The
>>profusion of toolbar icons seems to stem from a
>deliberate decision to “minimize the
>>number of mouse clicks” needed to use the
>program. This may be an admirable goal, but
>>the result here is a visual mishmosh.
>Worst of all is the way the toolbars change as you
>>perform different tasks within the
>program- for example, as you move from Todo List to
>>Calendar, the
>Bold-Italic-Underline buttons move across the screen. That’s just
>>poor
>design..
>
>Maybe it’s a poor design choice - but a choice it is, not a blind blunder.
>Personally, I’m impressed with this innovation.
“Different strokes for different folks” - never more true than with PIMs.