Itās unfortunate that Asana has not taken meaningful design action and/or engaged in forward moving meaningful dialogue with this group of passionate users.
6 Likes
I agree! Itās now 3 months since the change, and although so many people complained about the new design, they did absolutely nothing! And that is indeed unfortunateā¦
6 Likes
Asana people, are you ever going to address this issue or have you just decided that everyone here is wrong and we absolutely have to use the tool in the ways you want us to?
This is a huge issue (specifically, the movement of projects below the description) for me and my team (currently 12 active users, soon to be 20 and eventually over 40).
7 Likes
Love the hierarchy changes
I sent my lengthy version to my sales person but wanted to post here to suggest two solutions that will make both parties happy (the old users who want to be efficient like me, and the newbies who just want to figure out how to use Asana.
Solution Part 1: Enable a classic style like what Google did. In fact someone out there already did it using the Stylus chrome plugin in conjunction with two themes āAsana Dark Theme (textured background)ā and āAsana Dark, Reduce Noise, Tasks Projects Menu Moveā. When both of these are enables using Stylus you have the old look and feel back. The problem is that as Asana makes updates the developers of these theme must make updates. If Asana managed a āclassic viewā then it would always work and make both parties happy.
Solution Part 2: Make it so users with 4K monitors and multiple monitors can see all the needed info on the āTask Listā screen. Currently Asana does not let the Task List be wider than about 1000 px. This means that if a task is in multiple projects, has tags, and / or uses custom fields then a user must click into the details of a task then scroll down below the description before you can see important information like tags and projects. If Asana enables wide format Task List viewing rather than just the ellipsis ā¦ then we could all be more efficient.
I hope that someone at Asana will look at this post and make a comment or just make these two solution into a reality.
6 Likes
With the Task pane changes listed in the Asana release notes for June, should I stop hoping for a change to the layout?
Does that indicate that the change has been pushed to all users and is going to stay that way for the foreseeable future?
Thank you.
4 Likes
I think the usage data missed some of what a lot of users are doing naturally.
I read the original development comment - and agree that a lot of time is spent on those specific items and tasks - But this change I have to agree with the thread - was a bad one and the data didnāt support it because the action is āSEE THISā and note how important it is, and then take action upon it.
7 Likes
I want to follow up on my original comment to this and why moving Project down and hiding tags in a menu option hinder our workflow. It is now months later, and I have to stay it is still REALLY annoying, and trips me up in my daily usage of Asana. I have not gotten used to it.
At this point we are considering putting our plan to move to premium on hold given that this is one of the top topics, bu there is radio silence from Asana.
9 Likes
Hi @Vince_Mustachio and thanks for following up on this. Yes, I can confirm this UI change has been pushed to all our users. That said, weāre still monitoring feedback on this thread, so I would encourage anyone with a feedback to share it on this thread!
1 Like
It still frustrates me and my team and I still hate it.
Thereās not one person in our organisation thatās happy about this change.
6 Likes
I can confirm that this is still deeply frustrating and I much preferred the old way. Iām not usually change-resistant, but this is a hard one.
5 Likes
Can we please have projects back above the description box. Totally ridiculous. Totally annoying.
This impacts every day.
5 Likes
Thanks for making such a great product, Asana. And for being brave enough to have an open discussion forum where people can express their passionate views on your decisions 
I want to fully support the desire to have project information back at the top of the task.
I think, from a design perspective, the project is a āparentā attribute and so hierarchically its intuitive to find it and see it above the core task description, especially when parent tasks are found there, when a task is in a project and has a parent ask, seeing them separate is odd.
I would be fine with having less projects shown or grouping them horizontally if space/clutter is such a concern.
e.g
if >2 projects then show them on one line without sections shown and include an option to explode the projects area and display all projects vertically with sections shown & editable
I imagine the main concern is balancing onboarding of new users (both individual and organisational) vs. experienced/power users. Which is why the decision by Asana seems so at odds with the thoughts shared here (we mostly represent experienced/power users).
That said, here are some good reasons why having projects above the task description makes sense for new users;
- Itās intuitive to have parent elements visually āaboveā core elements of a task like the product description. Itās also odd to have such a core element of a task floating down by itself under a long task description
- Projects and becoming used to projects are an essential part of good Asana usage. āHidingā them makes them seem less important and makes it harder to onboard users to see the value of projects and how to use them.
- Possibly concerned about confusion for new users as a problem; but there are design solutions to minimising project-overload in scenarios where a task has many projects and the user ācanāt get startedā because of so much mess at the top.
- Project hygiene is good and important and people canāt remember everything. Itās a good prompt for new users to see projects somewhere easy and obvious.
Finally, maybe myself and even my organisation are outliers but it seems very odd to me that the project information is not one of the top used elements of a task. Perhaps people look at it more than they interact with it? I know even when Iām not changing project information Iām checking it a lot.
Have you done eyeball tracking testing to see how often people look at it?
Has interacting with projects on tasks gone down since the movement? Does this lead to a worse experience for new/any Asana users?
Thanks again!
15 Likes
I agree that having the project after the description slows down productivity significantly. If the task description is long and there are comments, itās actually difficult to find the project name. Furthermore, if the task description info isnāt sufficient, having the project name at the top prompts the user to go to the project level for more info before coming back to a co-worker. I also agree that making projects prominent is key to transitioning people from using Asana as a glorified to-do list to using it as a project management tool, which is where its real value lies. I like the suggestion above about have a collapsable/expandable project field as a solution to space concerns.
8 Likes
Hi @Kristen_Sukalac and thanks for sharing your point of you on this thread and provide us with some context. Just in case you havenāt seen it, you can use the āTab+Pā shortcut to skip long descriptions and get straight to the Project field; thought you might find it useful for the time being!
Thanks, Marie. That is a useful shortcut to know (which I didnāt), although again, for an advanced user!
2 Likes
A thought.
Can one of the Asana team - @Marie @Katie @louis or others - give us some insight into how the Asanas are using Asana. You must use tasks and projects extensively in your own work, and no doubt have tasks with multiple projects, tags, custom fields.
How do you read those data efficiently without significant hunting and scrolling.
Keeping description fields short appears to be the ONLY way to become accustomed to this.
(4 months in, Iām still struggling 
)
6 Likes
Hi @Tom_Sopwith! Youāre right, all our work is of course organized in Asana; personally, I have always relied on shortcuts, so whenever Iām working on a task and need to access the project tab, Iām using the āTab+Pā shortcut to automatically focus on the project tab! If youāre not using yet, I highly recommend giving it a go 
In terms of UX design, the suggestion to use keyboard shortcuts is diametrically opposed to the idea of making the user interface simpler for users. Only users who are technically versed (a.k.a. āpower usersā) are using keyboard shortcuts. Therefore, the logic and stated reasoning for moving the projects off the visible viewport is flawed.
Second, the keyboard shortcuts only work for editing the values. They are not suitable for discovery. In most cases, a user does not want to change the values, but only find out and verify how a task is organized currently in a longer list of tasks. Initiating the editing interface with the keyboard shortcut breaks the userās previous user interaction / navigation.
Our whole team is still complaining. All of our organization guests/customers working with us in Asana are still complaining. This single issue gives co-workers, partners, and customers who are opposed to Asana (or in favor of other products) a key argument into their hands.
Dear Asana, this is a great strategy to lose market share.
13 Likes
Agreed.
We may as well lose the UI and go back to a CLI
2 Likes