Is this just not for me?
I come from using Todoist and Focuster. I love these two tools. They're simple, fast, and were immediately intuitive to me. In my review I'm going to focus most on the UI/UX side of things.
Marvin: it's a little confusing to me.
I like things being limited yet powerful, like an apple device. Though they don't allow you to expand your device a lot with new features and such by adding code to it, they make sure all of the use within the device is pleasant. Now, Amazing Marvin is pleasant, but it also has *a lot* of options, and this overwhelms me. Those options I mention go from the strategies to the workflow library to the settings themselves where you can even adjust the pixel width (!?) of your list with and without the sidebar.
Now to some this may be very pleasant because of the customization options, but the way that it's implemented feels clumsy and confusing to me. The features are amazing but it's all a lot to take in. I'd like it all to feel more focused, instead of fidgety. One way one could implement this is by adding tooltips in places so that users can hover over them to get some sort of clear view of what something does. Please either simplify the experience or strip it down to where it's a more focused way of customizing your AmazingMarvin experience.
That's my main point of improvement. Here's what I like:
- The features are amazing, and they come in bunches. Though it's confusing to me for now, the customization will definitely also end up coming in handy for a lot of people. It's sort of like a 'make your own productivity app' feel.
- It's a pretty fast app
- The app is clear about what you're doing (very important!!): every time you make an action it tells you exactly what you did in some way or another, which is nice for clarity.
- The app can 'mimic' your old to-do list to help you get accustomed. Would be nice to get a clearer view of what it actually customizes to help you get more accustomed to it, though!
- The agenda view within the tasks list is neat: you can drag your mouse down the timeline and let go to create a to-do that spans across the dragged over time. Don't know how else to describe it. Either way you can tell they put thought into making Marvin as a tool as handy and as intuitive as possible.
Those are just a few highlights of what I like, there is a LOT to like about Amazing Marvin.
The best I can do is recommend you to go and try it out for yourself. It's 100% worth your time to do so, and it's free.
ChristinaW
May 9, 2024Hey! Thanks so much for the extensive review. Appreciate it!
I completely understand where you are coming from. Making sure Marvin is not overwhelming and easy to understand is something we are constantly working on improving. With a lot of power and features, inevitably you run the risk of overwhelming the user. It's just in opposition of simplicity. We have a lot of features that are unique to Marvin so often there is also not a good reference point users have to understand it quickly. A bit of a learning curve if you want to understand everything is inevitable. We try to make this easier by adding a video and article to each strategy. Having the strategies separate in itself is an attempt to reduce overwhelm as things can be explored step by step. We also want to add more in-app tips for feature discovery and courses to help with the whole: how do I know what to turn on and setup question. :)
The workflow library is very new and basically came out to try and reduce the feature overwhelm and time it takes to setup Marvin. Instead of adding features and customizing them yourself you can use a premade setup. Now I realize that this might have caused even more overwhelm and confusion! haha
I try to add a lot of explanations everywhere but I think patients is usually too low to read it and there is an expectation of things being intuitive. Which isn't always 100% possible. But we are working on it. :)
With apps like Todoist or Focuster who give you basically one way to work onboarding etc. is much simpler. There is a basic setup in Marvin, so if you are willing to ignore all the extra features, you would most likely also find Marvin simple to use (the basic day planning workflow). Simplicity is nice at the start, but often users start to have major issues with certain features that don't quite work the way they need to or with things missing. Those are the kind of users who will find their happy place in Marvin. We definitely have much lower conversion for users who are relatively new to productivity and optimizing their workflows. This is to be expected.
I hope you will start to find Marvin less overwhelming as time goes on. We will do our best to improve on that front. Reach out anytime if you have an idea for something that would be helpful.
Thanks again! :)