There is nothing wrong with Trello. It works as advertised and it works well.
There are a few things I would want to change, maybe they have gone too far down the minimalist user interface route, as have others, but it is still a very useable piece of software with a consistent approach across the desktop (web app), tablet and phone.
So why have I stopped using it?
Simply, I have no use for it right now.
I have no use for it right now
The concept of keeping your information on ‘cards’ in ‘stacks’ is compelling and something I have done in the physical world on and off for the past 30+ years since I learnt how to manage projects using index cards.
My information is distributed across a number of applications and Trello doesn’t link to them so the data held in Trello was in isolation and when a card was finished with and discarded, I couldn’t access it.
This made me uncomfortable with adding the rich data like photo, graphics, web clippings etc.. to my Trello cards. So my cards remained short and text only which is fine but then it just became an online version of simple text based index cards which I could drag and drop between stacks maybe to identify different contexts or activities or times applicable to that information.
Time for some examples; I had a ‘board’ (trello term for a collection of cards that can be seen at one time on the screen) for the week so it had one stack per day and in each stack I would have a card per appointment or key task that needed to be done… but this duplicated elements of my calendar and my to do list.
I had a board for my major work project with stacks for the phases of the elements of that project and cards for each element. The stacks were named: backlog, in analysis, in development, in testing, deployment, issues etc… but these were either duplicating the ticketing system at my workplace or my project documents.
In the end I found that every use I had for Trello was already accommodated by other software that linked with each other and had data archiving facilities and had an easier interface for quick manipulation of the data cards.
I have removed the app from my phone and my web browser shortcuts but kept it on my android tablet and have promised myself that I will revisit it in the future, I have a history of revisiting apps when I can see that they are either not for me now or they are going to continually improve the experience.
This has happened with the software that I am now using for my to do list but more on that in another post on another day.
We all have apps and applications that we have downloaded, installed, used for a while and discarded as it doesn’t fit with our current practices.
My CALL TO ACTION to you from this post is to identify those apps you don’t use and let me know what they are in the comments below.
ideasandmethods 