Now, when you hover over the Projects tab at the top, you’ll see a dropdown menu listing five of your most recently accessed projects. Click on one to be taken to that project. If you’re looking for an older project, you can still click the Projects tab to see your full project list. It’s almost as easy as Cmd+Tab, huh?

Clean, simple, easy. As it turns out- not really. We did two things to shorten the form, and make it more aesthetically pleasing.

• We got rid of the password confirmation field. No harm done; if you fat-finger it when you enter it, you can just reset it later.
• We called the last form field “Account Name” and did not explain what this means. To our thinking, it was common terminology and used widely when referring to web apps.

We did a third thing that also hampered the usability of the form… We didn’t make the passwords the last thing on the list.

We had all sorts of people putting the password into the account name field thinking it was the confirmation. More still entered special characters and spaces into the account name only to be greeted by a form error, and forced to go back again.

We quickly worked on a redesigned form:

Much better! Not a single support request or lost user today.

• We added explanations beneath the unobvious form fields.
• Added a cool, absolutely positioned, text example of how the account url will be used in practice.
• Added the password confirmation back in.
• Made a brighter button, and upped the contrast on the text.

It goes back to something we’ve said before- users aren’t stupid, they just want simple things. In our effort to cut the form down to only the essential elements, we went too far. Bumper rails make bowling easier, and we want everything to be easy!

Check the form out online here.

We’ve sent it through testing, testing, and more testing. It’s ready- really ready- right here!

So what’s it all about?

Well, we thought the world needed a PM app that was just that- a box of essentials only, to help you keep your ducks in a row. What’s the point of your task manager- to organize your stuff, right? When you have to sift through settings, drop-downs, permissions and who only knows what else to organize your todos… it can quickly defeat the purpose.

Paprika is the love child of Simplicity and Efficiency.

It lets you stop worrying about organizing your todos, and start checking them off the list. It cuts away literally every single abstraction between you and what needs done. Quit fussing around, messing with sublists, fiddling with moving calendar dates and so on. Get back to work.

Okay, so that’s the heart of Paprika. Here’s what makes up the bones.

It’s Realistic.

We stripped away all the excess features, and made Paprika an extension of your thought process. You have a note, you type it up in one fell swoop, hit save, and get back to work.

In that one swoop, you can tag your note, date it or make it a todo. All the most obvious ways to keep track of your workflow, made possible by fluid movements of your hand along the keyboard.

• Use a hyphen at the beginning of a line to make it a todo.
• Add #important tags to keep your thought process in line with itself.
• Have a deadline on 7/14/10? If you typed it, it’s tracked.

It’s Text-Based.

Again, extreme simplicity works in your favor. Paprika uses simple textile, so you can always dump your information somewhere else, easily retrieve it, and effortlessly edit it. This fast and simple method of tracking your todos makes organization feel like second nature…

You can use it a couple different ways because of this. You can create one big long list, and track your notes with tags, dates, and todos, or you can separate your lists into individual projects and do the same thing.

• You can use simple Textile to format your text.

• When you edit a document, it’s plain text. When you save it, you get the formatted interactive equivalent.

• You can use a hyphen at the beginning of a line to make it a todo.

It’s a Great Complement.

Paprika can be integrated really easily into other areas of your workflow. For example, we use Staction to communicate with each other, and to track our projects. Now we create a single todo list, share it, attach it to its corresponding project in Staction, and collaboratively work toward completing the project. Assigning a task to someone is as easy as tagging their name, or initials. Then, when the person to which the todo is assigned has completed the task, they can check it off so everyone knows it’s done. The Paprika list can be edited along the way- adding todos as they come up.

Sharing is just as easy. When you’re in edit mode, a simple link shows you whether or not the project is being shared, and even provides a URL to share it with. If you want to stop sharing, click the link and it becomes private once again. It’s a natural process.

It’s FREE.

That’s right, free. In it’s current state, you can have Paprika for no charge whatsoever. As with all our apps, there will be updates, and feature additions- which will be available for a fee later on.

We know this app isn’t going to be for everyone- and that’s okay. But for those who value simplicity in it’s most effective form, we think you’re going to love it.

Sign up for Paprika!

• The Idea.
• The Name.
• One Button.
• Panicky Sweat.
• Beta Testing.

In the spirit of the above mentioned series, we thought we’d add one more piece about the single moment we realized we needed Paprika.

Simply put, it all began with a wish. I think a lot of apps are born this way, or at least the ideas for them. Somewhere, someone thinks to themselves: “I wish there was a tool that let me do this more easily.” That person thinks about how much this app would positively affect their productivity, and how they could integrate it into their workflow. Research is done, and when it appears there’s nothing out there exactly like the conceptual application, the excitement begins because development is looming in the future… but let’s go back to the wish part.

In my opinion, there are two types of people: those who don’t realize they need something until they already have it, and those who create something because they realize they need it.

Personally, I’m the first type. I love it when an app is an extension of my thought process- but I’m not sure I would have figured out my need for it on my own. I work with the second type of people, though, and I’m starstruck when I watch them think, and follow the progress of their thoughts.

If you’re an app developer, wishes take on a whole new meaning. Although the connotation of the word implies that wishes are relatively unattainable (that’s why you’re wishing to begin with), developers have the power to make it happen. It’s a mindset I think more people should adopt. I can boil it down to this: nothing is impossible.

So this wish for Paprika came from dissatisfaction- failure to find a tool that was an extension of the way we already thought. We (and by we, I mean Paste- collectively) knew if we were unhappy, chances were others were unhappy, too. The dissatisfaction led to the wish, which led to the research, which led to the excitement, which led to the work, which brought us Paprika.

Now if we could just find a genie to grant us the other three wishes we don’t have time for…

We recently launched our brand new app into beta testing. Paprika is our third full app, and we’ve managed to learn a few things along the way.

Tweet, Tweet, Paprika.

We used Twitter to get the word out about our beta invites, and sign-up. Twitter has become an even better catalyst for spreading news than it was when we launched Jumpchart, and we’ve managed to make friends with people who do what we do, and are a lot like us. (That’s the point, right?!) It’s a great way to start a conversation, and has become a legitimate recommendation tool for our industry.

Reaching Out.

We tried something new this time around- we reached out within the industry using good old fashioned e-mail. We tried to target designers and developers who we thought would appreciate Paprika the most, and give us really valuable feedback on it. Of course, the difficult part was getting through to those we didn’t already know personally. With the touchy BS detectors out there, we really didn’t want our e-mail to sound like spam. It took some careful word-smithing, and lots of revisions, but we reached a version of “Hey, would you pretty please try our new app? It would mean a lot to us, and we really value your opinion.” we were happy with, and out the e-mails went.

Beta Sign Up.

The tried and true method of having people sign up for an invite was a method we used again this time. We set up a simple, slick sign-up page that asks for e-mail address only and included the option to receive our newsletter. By noting very clearly that all e-mail addresses we received would be deleted after the beta (unless the user signed up for the newsletter) we relieved any pressure that we might be contacting them again in the future, or that the user would be held to any future obligations.

Newsletter.

We already know lots of people from Jumpchart and Staction- and thought they might like to hear about Paprika, too. So we used our newsletter to tell them. Although the primary purpose of the newsletter was to spread the word about our beta test, we also included information about other happenings around the Paste office. This effort really spiked the number of beta signups!

Getting the word out about your beta test is nearly as important as getting the word out about the launch, but in a different way. You’re soliciting the feedback of your peers, your competitors, and your potential users. The information that comes from these tests is crucial to the overall success of your app when launch day arrives.

Blog Posts
Oh yeah, and, Sign up for the Paprika beta!
(see it works!)

Paprika is a text-based organization tool that integrates assigned todos, team communication, hash tags and more. If you like Jumpchart, Staction, and lists you can check off as you go, we think you’ll love this.

Sign up for the beta here!