Who is the Trello team?

[Beth French]

First of all, we are a group of Trellists that are eager to hear what the early viewers of the new experience think.

But on a more personal note, who are we and what have we been working on?

[Beth French]

I'll get us started.

I've been with Atlassian for 10+ years and with Trello for 5 years. I was super excited to be able to join Trello as I was always a fan girl. The main reason I loved Trello was how it helped me capture and organize my brain 'on paper' and specifically to track my to do items.

So the features we have been working on these last months, are things I personally could really use. My particular focus area was more broad than other PMs, looking at the logistics like analytics and helping with the AI summaries for sending slack messages to board. But I am an avid adopter of all the new features.

My favorite being the slack-to-inbox.

[Victor Dronov]

Hi Trello fans!

I am Victor, a lead PM for Trello personal productivity. Happy to chime in to any discussion or answer any question you may have!

I am with Atlassian for 5+ years and with Trello for the last 3 happy years. I've been using Trello as my personal to-do list system for about 10 years by now, though!

When not busy building the new Trello, you can find me traveling to one of the North America national parks and hiking some steep trail!

[Caity]

Hi, there!

I've been at Trello for over 8 years. Before that, my colleagues at my previous job referred to me as the "Trello Queen" because I was such a huge fan! I started off on Trello's support team, and I've been a product manager for almost 7 years now.

Over the past few months, I've been working on the new integrations between Trello and Slack, as well as the new "inbox@app.trello.com" address that lets you send an email directly in your Trello Inbox. I also worked on mirror cards—this was a really exciting project for me that I've wanted to bring to Trello for a long time!

[Alexandros Mathopoulos]

👋🏻 Hi Trello fam! 

Lex here from the Trello Product Management team! I joined Trello 2 years ago after taking a brief break from my time at Atlassian to go and build a startup of my own. Trello was the first to do list I ever used back in college - so I was super excited for the opportunity to be able to actually work on the product. 

Over the past few months I have been working on some of our exciting new capabilities like Inbox, Planner, and our new split screen user experience! Super excited to hear what all of y'all think about some of these new features and get your ideas on how to make them even better! 

[Michael Stephenson]

You can make it immediately better but NOT removing the left Board sidebar. After using the new board switcher on the Beta it is a vastly backward experience. You have taken something that was super quick and easy and made it an unnecessarily convoluted process.

[Alex]

Hi Trello fans!

Fellow Trello fan here and feeling super lucky to work on a product I love! I've been with Atlassian for 12+ years and with Trello for to past 2+. After having two kids I started using Trello to manage my life outside of work -- between all the classes, celebrations, (and with two hungry kids) groceries, life got super busy and Trello helps me manage it all.  

When I'm not working or being mom I like to go to the studio and throw some clay. I even have a Trello board to keep track of all the projects I want get messy with.

You may remember a post I did about a year ago announcing list colors and collapsible lists. More recently I've worked on some new user onboarding experiences and some new card capabilities that are coming soon!

[Daydreamer Mike]

Yay to the colors 🌈

[James Hurley]

Hey folks!

I work on the Trello mobile team, and have been with Trello for 3 years. In my career I've primarily focused on consumer and mobile experiences - building delightful, useful features is what I'm most passionate about!

Super open to any feedback and issues you may encounter while using the Trello Android and iOS mobile apps. And I'm very excited to share everything we've been working on in tandem with our partners on the Trello web team. 

Also! If you haven't tried Trello yet on your mobile device, search us up in the App Store / Play Store and check us out!

[Niranjan Krishnamurthi]

Hey everyone! 😊

I can’t believe it’s been over 5 years since I joined Atlassian, and most of that time has been spent at Trello. As Trello’s very first dedicated user experience researcher, I’ve been all about helping our teams connect with you, our awesome customers, and figuring out how we can make Trello even better for you!

Speaking of making things better, if you’ve had a chance to try out some of our Personal Productivity Beta features and would be willing to chat about your experience, we’d love to hear from you! Just sign up using this link: https://www.userinterviews.com/projects/AmIDAbUudw/apply. If you’re selected, we’ll show our appreciation with a $200 gift card! 🎉

Can’t wait to hear from you!

[Gaurav Kataria]

I am the Head of Product for Trello, and I would love to hear your feedback! Check out this article that I wrote about the new Trello 

https://www.atlassian.com/blog/announcements/trello-personal-productivity

[Michael Stephenson]

My feedback is you shouldn't be replacing the Left Side Board menu with the pop out one. For anyone managing a lot of boards it's a massive PIA and a huge step backwards in terms of usability. You need to give us the option to dock the Board list on the left like the Inbox and Planner. Or better yet .... just leave it where it is now.

[Sam Szuchan]

If you ship the removal of the left side board menu, I will have no choice but to move to another system. The current one is unusable. I really hated the last update with forcing the check boxes, too. Trello is going in a really concerning direction, please start listening to your users.

[Daydreamer Mike]

Hi @Sam Szuchan @Michael Stephenson 

I am going to jump in as someone who is a champion of Trello but who isn't an Atlassian employee, therefore my opinion is purely my own.

I believe you have a fair point about the change to the left sidebar and having been in the Beta design cohort for some time, was always the area that I had the greatest concern about. My experience after many months of using it, I went from disliking the new board switcher, to accepting it to, now forgetting about the existence of the old side bar.   

Remember Trello serves an audience in the region of 10 million and the audience is more varied perhaps than any other tool out there .  If they do nothing to the product, people complain and leave.  If they make changes, people complain and threaten to leave. 

They are trying to find the sweet spot of functionality, freshness, features people are excited, while maintaining the simplicity that makes it accessible to so many. On the whole I think they do an excellent job of striking this balance.

I can assure you that the Trello team listen to their users a whole lot more than any design team I have come across in my many years doing this. At the end of the day, they have to make touch choices to benefit the largest proportion of their current and potential user base.

If the reasons cited are big enough for you to leave Trello, I say do it.  But, don't expect the grass to be greener on the other side.  

[Sam Szuchan]

Just like Slack, which did the exact same thing and quickly reverted it? Cheers.

[Michael Stephenson]

@Daydreamer Mike ... all valid points. But this is a Beta feedback forum, for the new Beta layout. All we can do and relate our experience with the new Beta layout.

I don't for a second think my user experience is the only one ... but it is mine ... so it's the only one I can comment on.

[Alexandros Mathopoulos]

👋🏻 Hi @Sam Szuchan @Michael Stephenson and others, 

Lex here from the Trello Product Management team! First, I wanted to say thank you to you and others for all of the feedback! I can assure you that our entire Product and Engineering team is monitoring all feedback coming from our millions of users very closely to ensure we are building the best product we can for the vast majority of our users. With any major change to a product there are a lot of tradeoffs that we have to consider (for example, introducing Planner & Inbox in a side by side experience view which is being very well received by a large proportion of our beta users) while also making switching between boards not difficult. 

Is there anything we can do to make the new board switcher better? For example, we have heard from some users that one of the things the liked about the old left hand nav is being able to see a list of boards vs the tiles/boxes we currently have in the board switcher. 

I know the new board switcher has a learning curve and is very different than what we used to have. One tip (just in case you have not discovered it yet) is the ability to quickly find any board across all your workspaces with never even touching your mouse. For example, try hitting b on your keyboard from anywhere in Trello, immediately start typing the name of the board, and then hitting the enter key to open that board. 

[Michael Stephenson]

@Alexandros Mathopoulos 

Hey mate ... I appreciate you taking the time to respond. 

In short, the thing you can do to make the board switcher better is simply giving me the option to leave it where it is. Hitting B on the keyboard and then typing a board name is not quicker or more efficent then simply moving my mouse, that my hand is already on and perfomring a single click on the present list of boards on the left hand side. 

Trello for me is a mouse heavy experience, so anything that requires me to remove my hand from the mouse isn't an advantage. The new switcher is simply a lot more work to use than the currently setup which is much more intutitive. 

I work in an organisation that has 20 plus boards running at any given time, and those boards change, get added and removed. So having an always open, visual list is by far the best option for me. It is also a list that doesn't interefere with the Trello board itself. 

I simply can't keep the new switcher open and use the board at the same time ... this issue alone is a massive problem for me. I need to be able to have the board list on screen at all times, while I use Trello. The only sensible place to do that ... is the left hand side. The work flow goes from Left to Right.

I am not fussed about the INBOX or PLANNER, which ironically are both exactly where I want the Switcher to stay.