We’ve been working on some things the last month or so. Namely, a completely redesigned UI and a entirely rebuilt application. We’ve learned so much the last 6 months and are bursting at the seams trying to get this Task Management application out to you guys. Every day is closer than ever before. 

We’ve been up to some things the last few days. Mostly - Entirely reworking the Interface to our first product, Yorco Task. We’ve rebuilt the UI library from the ground up. Made a completely new interface and we even made the bad boy responsive.

We couldn’t be more excited about moving to a public beta within the next month. Here is a very rough sneak peek!

Change isn’t easy. Change of any kind. It’s psychologically studied and connected very directly with increased stress levels. It can make you do crazy things.

In the world of web products change happens on a daily basis. However, there is a different work used when “bigger” style change happens. Pivoting. When you make a drastic change in the product that causes severe amounts of work because you 1. learned something totally new or 2. Ended up with a product that just didn’t work quite right. In our case - We’re a number 2.

In late October we had finished a first version of the product we spent the previous 4 months planning, designing, crafting and developing. We got to the first usable version and had a tough time using it. Built out some more features and it was still difficult to use. It was incredibly disheartening to get to that check-point in making a product you’ve grown so close with and realizing it wasn’t quite right. It was tough individually. It was tough as a team.

It’s so important to continually understand that failing with an initial hunch is just another opportunity to know the real problem to solve. It can hurt the connection you feel to an original idea.

But don’t give up - Keep it going. Pivot until your heels are bleeding. We can’t wait to learn how to start serving some users!

In a Google Image search for “Pivot”, this is the first thing that comes up.

It’s been a really fun past couple weeks as we’ve been working through some tough decisions on the Yorco Task product. Namely - Our first version of the interface just didn’t work. 

Here is a shot of the “All Tasks” Feed - 

It’s been a really fun lesson for us in learning the balance between designing something to be “testable” and designing something to be launched. It’s a hard balance putting work out that you know isn’t quite done but you need the feedback it would generate from users. 

Ultimately - In the case of our first functional version 1.0 of Yorco Task, after lots of usage internally and a controlled alpha group of testers, we need to really rework the interface to accommodate a quick switching of group views. So, we’re currently working it out and will be shipping our beta build to our awesome group of mailing list subscribers before Christmas!

Looking forward. 

We’re super excited and honored to be taking part in demoing at the first Orlando Tech Meetup. We’re also helping get this monthly meetup into moving form and couldn’t be more excited about the vision for catalyzing the Orlando tech community. Just today we came across a really great post on TC from Brenden Mulligan about building the entrepreneurial community in your city and we believe Orlando Tech Meetup is going to be a vital part of making that a reality here in Orlando. 

Please join us this Thursday, Nov 10th 6:30 - 8:30pm at Urban ReThink as we have a Mashup of the Meetup and combine Orlando PHP with ReThink’s Tech Thursdays and launch the Orlando Tech Meetup. We’ll be doing the demo’s near the end of the time and 3 Central Florida tech companies will have 3-5 minutes to demo their product and get feedback for 3-5 minutes. Nothing better. 

Here’s the lineup for the Demo’s - 

Gotootie
Gotootie, founded by Kyle Christian Steele and Himanshu Pagey in 2010, provides a way for people and businesses in the same place to easily communicate through text-based messaging & share documents via their computer or smart phone without having to find a profile, twitter id or hashtag. The free service is currently available for public BETA testing by visiting www.gotootie.com from any Android or iPhone device.

Dropost.it
Dropost.it allows you to drop gifts for friends at any location. Friends can then pick up that gift the next time they are there. Sign up for the beta at http://dropost.it/

Yorco
Yorco is a social productivity app suite founded early 2011. Yorco is currently building it’s first app called Yorco Task, a socially enabled task management application for teams and small groups of people to get more done together. You can signup to be part of the Beta at http://yor.co/

There are few challenges in life that become more rewarding the more difficult they get. The past 5 months have been a tremendous challenge in learning how to build a web product to the best of our abilities. There are a few things that really mark how building for the web is different than building for anything else. Namely, that your never done working on your product. 

Learning how to iterate and continually develop the holistic experience around your product is a very unique challenge. And a very rewarding one.

This second week of October we’re three weeks into using a live, deployed version of Yorco Task that we’ve been internally iterating on and sharing with a few select people we can get face-to-face interaction with as they use it and test it. It’s been a tremendously shaping experience as big design hypotheses about our UI have been completely broken and some have held true.

Regardless, we’re still early in the hunt for making a well defined product and we can’t wait to get it in your hards to help shape.

Here’s a shot of the current deployed version, without any tasks added.

Every day is another step closer.

Thanks to everyone who’s signed up on our landing page, yor.co, we apologize for the length in testing and honestly can’t wait to put it in your hands.

Earlier today we came across a really great article on the importance of the implementation of Management Systems in the Startup Process. This is something we’ve been having quite a good bit of conversation about around the whiteboard. In all of our conversations about what “Startup Design” looks like this is a huge part of the conversation. 

Here is the article -

Building Sustainable High-Growth Startup Companies: Management Systems as an Accelerator

We don’t really know how the implementation of a management system is working and or really being done in our startup. We’re absolutely in the infancy stages of learning how to build and grow a company - We’re trying to remain more focused on building a product that is truly engaging in the market before we worry to much about building a company around it. 

In our initial brainstorming we’ve had really fun and exciting conversations about a self-governing process that takes continually evolving shapes as a management process. With a democratically controlling decision making head. We’ve used the Design Thinking methodology to fancy up a structure revolving around answering the questions of Who, What and Why in the day-to-day work routine. 

We’ve definitely got lot’s more to post on this idea and lots more to say about this topic, but in due time. 

Until then - Look forward to next Friday!

It’s been pretty long overdue. We’ve had our noses hard to the keyboard working out some interface usability and scalability issues. Nonetheless! It’s indeed time we give some call-outs and preview to what it is we’re working on.

In case you were unaware, we’re building a social task management application called Yorco Task. Let’s face it, no one is meant to do things alone. It’s vision is to be the simplest, most intuitive and fun experience for getting things done together on the web - Being faster than email and more productive than Twitter. We’ve had an incredible time creating how this thing will work. We’ve gone through tons of iterations to be where we are now with a final interface. Still yet, there is lots of feedback and empathizing to do in order to build the most suitable application for you.

So, here’s an in-depth look at the product and it’s interface thanks to our great friend Danny Jones who finalized the front-end.

Why Task?

Absolutely a great question. We’ve worked long and hard on answering it ourselves. The core belief is that we desire a more simple, usable and facilitative communication tool for ourselves as individuals in the groups we work with. We believe there are others of us out there who have this same problem. So, without any futher ado, lets get to the nitty gritty.

Here’s a few of our insights as to why we’re building Yorco Task.

Insight #1 
Working with other people can just simply be hard. There’s not any easy way to say it. And most often the communication exchange can be what makes things most difficult. Email is currently what we all use as a hub for this traction but easily causes confusion. We feel this is ready for a redesign in attempting to increase productivity and moving ideas forward.

Insight #2 
What currently exists in the task management space requires a high learning curve to begin using. This unnecessary burden doesn’t make sense to us. Simply put, if a mom can’t instantly know how to use the app, than it’s not ready yet. This has taken lots of iterative development but we believe this care for simplicity will set Yorco Task in a space of it’s own when it comes to social task management.

So - Here’s what we’ve worked on.

It’s Social
Your task management app should be addictive and fun. If it isn’t, than it’s probably useless. We’ve realized that when most people are on a computer and/or smartphone, there are hundreds of things fighting for their attention. The social ones always win. We have an innate desire to be connected with the people around us. Our Task Management should be the same way.

The last thing most of us are drawn to is our static and boring task management apps. To empower your ideas and help you get things done, this must change. With this in mind, we’ve integrated a few foundational features within Yorco Task that will help make getting things done better, together.

It’s Simple

With Yorco Task there is no learning curve. It’s a familiar look and feel without the useless features that cause confusion. We know there should be no work involved in making a list of things that need done. And getting those things done should feel rewarding and satisfying. We’ve worked through multiple iterations on making the task creating, sharing and completing process as simple as possible.

In closing, this has been our Philosophy in designing the product -
“Look at the design of a lot of consumer products — they’re really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.”
- Steve Jobs, MSNBC and Newsweek Interview 2006

We are super thankful to have you join us in this journey. As we continue to press forward in development and work through feedback and iterations, we would love to hear more of your thoughts. Please don’t hesitate to just drop us a line at hi@yor.co and let us know what you’ve experience with the Task Management process.

So far we’ve received great response to Yorco Task and are really excited to get it in your hands. Thank you so much for your patience in joining us in this process.

- The Yorco Team.

We’re really excited to be having a Design Thinking workshop follow-up session tonight! We’re going to be diving deeper into the Ideate phase of Design Thinking by working with one of the companies who was in attendance of our first workshop! We’re also super excited to be unveiling a prototype of a new concept were working on called Yorco Open. 

It’s definitely going to be an awesome night. Email robb@yor.co or croy@yor.co for more info if you’d like to join.