Using Trello Is Now a Massive Chore!

[#1]

I'm genuinely impressed at how spectacularly anti-user this update is. I now I have to click two times to get to the calendar:

This is especially incredible because there is PLENTY OF SPACE TO PUT ALL OF THESE BUTTONS IN.

However, this is to say nothing of the true prize: elimination of easy board switching.

I now have to click on this ... button (?) that's located in the middle of everything:



THEN I can get to a board switcher that is ... phenomenally less usable vs. the last iteration.

I am genuinely amazed at how it's possible to ship something like this. I have never seen a SaaS self-destruct like this in my life. Trello has gone from my favorite SaaS to now my most hated, and I am now going to need to invest dozens of hours into finding an alternative for this that I LOVED until two months ago when this "update" came over the horizon.

We were promised at least having the board navigator back—where is it? I don't have it.

Edit: fixing typos, I can barely spell because of how besides myself I am.

[Jenn Sartory]

Simplicity and ease of use were defining features of Trello. Proven by the extensive development of, use of, and need for Powerups, there's obviously a community demand for expanded functionality but never at the expense of what made Trello Trello - simplicity. 

I've been using Trello for 14 years in various industries as a PM - tech (consumer wearables & apps), music, content creation, and now residential design & construction. I'm honestly shocked at the updates (I've had the beta since February and have practically been avoiding Trello since).

I'm at a loss with this new update, and even more surprised they're so proud of it. Did they fire their UI team and let execs and developers run wild? and how long does it take to fix what they broke? 

[Sam Szuchan]

@Jenn Sartory Unfortunately, it's unlikely that any team capable of shipping something like this will ever fix it, and this is most likely the end of Trello as a product. If it's of any help, my research has shown me thus far that Notion is the best alternative, and it looks as if I'll be spending the next few weeks switching over.

This is just ... unbelievable. How many 10,000s of SOPs were just completely destroyed around the world? Forcing every power user into a massive adjustment period, all while making the product indisputably worse? I would have never imagined something like this would be possible - I guess the awful update to the checkmark system earlier this year was a warning.

[Susana Holguin-Veras]

@Jenn Sartory You mentioned you had the beta since February--did they remove the left nav bar right away in the beta you had? I'm so curious how the decision making process went here... Given the tenor of the current feedback, I'd be willing to bet that beta testers told the Trello team that this was not a good move as soon as it happened. But I wonder how early in the process this nav bar removal (and any potential anti-removal feedback) took place. Have people with the beta really been working without a nav bar since February? 

This entire saga is perplexing to me.

[Jenn Sartory]

@Susana Holguin-Veras I wasn't part of the beta testing team, I just installed the beta when offered because I blindly trusted Atlassian not to butcher Trello like this. I honestly can't remember if the sidebar was gone right away, but my build notes say I last updated Trello early Feb. I would also love to know the thought process behind this; it makes no sense.

[Jenn Sartory]

@Sam Szuchan thanks for the Notion rec, I'll keep that in mind for the future. For my current situation I'm looking into construction project management specific software. I had essentially created the solution with a suite of separate apps that included Trello, but now that Trello is what it is, it's time for us to make the move. Extra frustrating because we have both field and office teams, so changes can frustrate, be cumbersome, and disrupt the workflow further, even when the end result is for the best.

[Susana Holguin-Veras]

@Jenn Sartory Have you looked into Asana? It's much more complex than Trello (and more expensive per seat) but may work well for construction PM purposes. 

[Nils Geylen]

Was just today wondering "Why can I click out of the card view, but not out of the board switcher?" so I asked the Support AI and it went all

the card is a pop-over but the switcher is an element and we are keyboard driven now, for power-user efficiency blah blah

So getting into the switcher is offered as a choice (click or 'g') but getting out of it is 'esc' because efficiency?

(I honestly think that's something that changed just recently too, btw.)

This "upgrade" has really messed up more than I expected, and come august when our externals start getting back to their boards there will be panic. 

I can't imagine other, larger teams are gonna have an easy time explaining all this?

Alternatives? We're a small org and we've just had a massive cloud storage migration and I'm not looking forward to another one. SharePoint has a kanban/board thing, ironically called Planner, but that seems even worse.

Me too, it pains me to see a product go from basic-but-efficient in the Fog Creek days, then get some pretty good upgrades, but now, still lacking decent Views or Search or label management, and finally sink itself like this.

It is infuriating.

[Jenn Sartory]

@Susana Holguin-Veras I used Asana shortly after it launched and it's a good tool. I think we're going with JobTread - not only is it geared toward builders, but the team are in a FB group with users and actively answer questions, plus they have a features suggestion board where you can upvote others' requests. The fact they care about developing their platform FOR the people who use it instead of ignoring users' needs is looking really good right now.

[PJRanson]

I've said elsewhere and months ago during the beta test phase, that the tool island is against the grain of decades of UI design and is unintuitive, favouring form over function.

Which is absolutely a mistake. 

In fairness though, the development team have been updating the board switcher and various aspects of it, critically the ability to pin it to the left, as well as maintaining persistence of view if its closed and opened... The latest iteration is being rolled out, it's not perfect but it's getting there.

My gut feeling is that all this should have been picked up in alpha and it feels as though the UI design was agreed by committee and based on a criteria on how it looked, rather than (more importantly) how it feels to use in practice - I expect the tool island was a pet project idea by someone new or higher up who has managed to force it through, despite it being nonsensical.

We live in hope however that there are plans to accommodate users who don't want to track all over the screen to locate a click to then track elsewhere to locate another click to finally get to the action they require, in favour of the ability to 'dock' the islands, or better still, scrap that code in favour of a more conventional UI paradigm.

I.e. stick the top level switching options at the top of the screen, on a ribbon, that we are able to customise as we see fit.