UI change - Project tabs/buttons in tasks pushed down

In a recent release, the developers have moved the ā€œassociated projectā€ below the task description. Our team uses this to sort things in the project into subsections. Now I have to scroll down past the task descriptions to organize that task within the project. Please move this back to the top!!
asana-screenshot|490x500

4 Likes

Thank you for your passionate feedback everyone! It sounds like this has definitely had an impact. Iā€™ve delivered the feedback to the product team. Iā€™ll let you know if/when I have any updates for you.

11 Likes

Thank you for passing on this feedback. I posted separately in a new thread before I saw this one and am really hoping this is restored soon!

1 Like

Thanks @Alexis, highly appreciated! ā€” Wondering whether you can provide any kind of timeline for planned steps already?

It has been mentioned before, but perhaps you should indeed evaluate the option of rolling back this change now and redeploying it with a few adjustments later on?

As it might not be obvious to its full extent, this change negatively affects many users in their day-to-day work.

3 Likes

Hi Sunny - I appreciate your thoughtfulness here. Iā€™m unable to provide a timeline about feature requests. However, I think you might be interested in how we build our product roadmap. See full details in the post here: **Read me first** How you can give feedback and what we do next

Hi all,

Iā€™m a product manager here at Asana and I wanted to hop in and give some context on these changes and address some of your feedback. First, I want to thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us. Having such an active community of users who love Asana and can give feedback on the changes we make is incredibly helpful as we work to improve Asana.

For these changes specifically, we recognize that they have felt jarring for many of you and we will take that into account as we roll out any future update. We could have done a better job communicating those changes, and we apologize for the frustration and confusion that they caused.

In all of these updates, our goal is to make it clearer for a user to understand what the information is in a task, when it needs to be completed, and how to complete it. Hereā€™s some info on how we made decisions around the changes youā€™re seeing in Asana:

When we looked to simplify the top part of the Task Pane, we decided to include the actions that were taken most frequently by Asana users, which is how we landed on the following actions available in one click:

  • Attaching files to a task
  • Adding subtasks to a task
  • Copying the task link URL to your clipboard
  • Liking a task

We also saw through our research that many first time users of Asana are very confused about how to actually complete a task. Since this is one of the core actions that every user needs to be able to take to successfully manage their work with Asana, we wanted to be sure it was crystal clear how to complete work and keep projects moving forward. While the checkmark was definitely more space efficient and consistent with the rest of the app, updating to a ā€œmark completeā€ button makes it clearer for everyone how to complete their tasks when theyā€™re done. We have observed that first-time users find this action more intuitive in the adjusted layout, and weā€™re rolling it out so that each and everyone can easily adopt Asana, and contribute to the success of their team.

Lastly, we saw through user research that people generally want to get to the heart of task content ASAP, which is why we moved the placement of the project information below the taskā€™s description. I understand from your feedback this is one of the most noticeable changes for many of you. While this definitely takes some relearning from oneā€™s initial muscle memory (trust me, it took us a while to get used to it internally at Asana as well), we hope the pain caused by the change will decrease over time. As we tested and conducted research on this change, weā€™ve seen that it does make task info clearer for many users, especially among people who are brand new to Asana.

Because people can use Asana for so many different types of work, we often rely on data and product usage insights to guide decisions like this one. Itā€™s inevitable that some Asana users, like many of you here, use different actions more frequently than others, and will have different desires for how Asana will work for their team. Change is never easy, and we donā€™t take these actions lightly. Our hope in using data to make this decision is to make this work for as many users as possible, but we do apologize for the frustration this is causing. I recognize that many of you will still feel frustrated even after reading my response, and I want to personally ensure you that weā€™ll continue to look at all the feedback and take it into account as we make future changes. I hope this little bit of context helps you see where weā€™re coming from!

3 Likes

The thing is, for everyone commenting here, how many more are quietly disliking it in the background because itā€™s not in their nature to complain?

Some of the changes might be useful (e.g. those bullet pointed) but moving the project placement is, in my opinion, illogical and annoying.

While @louisā€™ reply clearly came from the right place, Iā€™m peeved that it feels like we were basically told to like or lump it.

My previous post was flagged, so apologies to anyone I offended. It wasnā€™t my intention.

8 Likes

I dontā€™ like and another 8 people from my team dont like new UI of task card.
Itā€™s complecated for us. Needed information are out of view! Brrr

5 Likes

Our team dont like new UI changes too.

5 Likes

I am shocked with answer that we should ā€œget used to itā€, ā€œthe pain will decrease over timeā€. You are doing research with new customers and forgetting your loyal ones. I imagine this is not a quantitative research, but a qualitative one. Donā€™t you have an A/B testing for it? Canā€™t you measure how long people are taking to create a new task? Track how long it takes to click on the right place? Sorry, but itā€™s getting more complicate a super basic task in my daily life, I dont understand why you get this design solution, try another thing if you want to improve usability for new customers.

10 Likes

Hi folks,

Your Community Manager here. It sounds like youā€™re feeling very passionate about this change and we appreciate how passionate you are about the Asana product. Please know that Louisā€™ comment is coming from a place of compassion and a dedication to the voice of the Asana customer and detailed research that informs decision making here at Asana. This research is both quantitative and qualitative, as is much of the research we do here, because it is important for us to have a full picture of the customer experience when we make product decisions and program decisions in general.

Please understand that we at Asana aim to do what our customers need, but unfortunately, as the life lesson goes, we arenā€™t able to please everyone all the time, every time. We ask that you kindly keep that in mind as you approach your comments here. In the same way that we want to be kind to you with our decision making and communication, we ask that you be kind to us. As such, in order to keep our community safe and healthy it will be important that we uphold community guidelines and posting guidelines in this thread as with every thread in the community. This means not using harsh, hateful language and instead using language that creates a productive dialogue, as so many of you have done already. Itā€™s this type of dialogue that makes our community great! So, weā€™re glad to hear your feedback and we invite you to provide feedback from a place of curiosity and kindness.

Thank you for creating this conversation with us!

Best,
Alexis

4 Likes

I logged in to my Asana today to process my New Tasks, which consists of a simple workflow:

  • Updating task text to make sure itā€™s a clear action
  • Setting a due date as needed
  • Adding the task to one or more projects
  • Adding any tags to the tasks
  • Moving to Today, Upcoming, or Later

I am SO disappointed that the ā€œAdd to Projectā€ button is now below the task description instead of above it. This was bad UI on iOS and, instead of updating the iOS app to match the web version, the opposite happened.

For those of us who forward emails to create Asana tasks, this is awful. I now have to scroll down past a very long description containing the entire email thread simply to add a task to a project. Since thereā€™s no keyboard shortcut to add a Task to a Project, I have to do this over and over again.

There was great clarity in having the task information of Assignee, Due Date, Projects, Tags, and Custom Fields all accessible above the description.

Please bring back this simple UI and apply it to all platforms.

6 Likes

Is there an option to switch back to the old interface? It was much better.

In the new version if a task needs to span projects and is NOT already assigned to a project, then the add button doesnā€™t exist. At least there is no mouse over where the option is available in other tasks.

For those assigned to multiple projects, the project on the full page float over is below the description. It makes more sense to keep it in the hierarchy of Project ā†’ Task ā†’ Description. This is because projects are organized that way outside your system.

Finally, the top task information takes up too much of the screen. The older version was was very brief which allowed more room for comments to scroll or an image in comments.

And rich text in comments isnā€™t that useful ā€“ if someone has enough time to bold, italic, and such for a comment, then they arenā€™t doing much real work. Go hire yourself some project managers and donā€™t let developers change workflow.

Best,

Justin

5 Likes
3 Likes

The Complete checkmark has turned into a ā€œMark Completeā€ rectangular icon at the top of the task. We felt top line should show the action. Who is assigned and date due. Thatā€™s moved down and weā€™re not in love with that.

Also project and tags are now below description. Makes sorting hard.

Maybe weā€™re on an A/B test? Because our team would have thought if many saw this build, then they wouldnā€™t like.

2 Likes

We dont like it also!!!

3 Likes

Asana, our team simply thinks you missed the mark on this one. We hope you might reconsider the UI change. With the exception of the formatting tools on Description and Comment, we donā€™t see the UI update to be helpful at all.

5 Likes

@louis,

Thank you for posting an explanation as to why Asana is testing these changes.

I donā€™t like the Assignee and Due Date being moved down, but now I can understand why it was done. The Task Title, Assignee, and Due Date are still together and at the top. At the end of the day that is what I believe is most valuable.
It will take some time to get used to the change, but I can get used to it.

However,
I STRONGLY disagree with the projects being placed below the description.

  1. If the Task is in multiple Projects, that is valuable information about the Task, that should be visible at the top of the Task.
  2. Itā€™s Task ā€œmetadataā€ that should be grouped with the rest of the Task ā€œmetadata,ā€ such as Title, Assignee, Due Date, and custom fields.
  3. If the Task has a long description it will be hidden from sight and wonā€™t be seen at all unless you scroll down.
  4. This isnā€™t a change you can get used to. The location of the Project in the Task pane will change from Task to Task, depending on the length of the description.
  5. One of the most valuable feature of Asana is multihoming Tasks. Donā€™t bury it.

BTW, the new formatting help in the comments and description is a great addition. Should be valuable for new and experienced users.

9 Likes

Thanks @Vince_Mustachio . I agree 100%
Find it hard to believe that data would not back (y)our point of view.
Thanks for the explanation, Asana, but please reconsider.

4 Likes

We have many custom fields in each of our Tasks, and the number of custom fields varies depending on the project. Therefore, the Project information will now never be in the same spot for our users. Asana is now a much more difficult user experience for our staff. We have received nothing but complaints about this change. Iā€™d also like to second the call for some kind of notice before these types of changes are rolled out. Do you guys realise how much a change like this impacts a business that uses Asana? We have over 100 users spread across three states in Australia!!

6 Likes