What is the Minimum UI for keeping track of your time?

[nelsonic]

@NataliaLKB @iteles maybe this is one of the things we can bring up on our next work-day?

[iteles]

There may be an argument to add this as 'MVP.md' to allow us to start jotting down some ideas which are easily added to by everyone!

[iteles]

All of the below is a starting point and up for discussion.

#MVP features

• Log in as a user (to enable timers to be saved)
• Start a timer
• Stop that timer
• Give that timer a description
• Give that timer a category?
• Start a new timer

#Usual points of friction
I’ve found that when I’m being super disciplined about it, I’m able to track my time for a period of time consistently, but day-to-day? It’s just too much work.
To me a minimum UI doesn’t just mean the minimum number of things on a page, it also means getting what I want done (starting a timer and having enough information to make it useful) in the minimum number of steps.
My biggest points of friction with existing timer apps are:

• Too much initial setup: If you’re going to ask me to input all of my projects and rates and different activities I may or may not want to use **up front, before I can start using the app**, that’s just going to be burdensome. I don’t even know how I’m planning on using the app yet!
• Too much overhead to start a timer: Having to type a description and then assign a category and then decide what other options to add to my timer when really, all I want to do is start it and get down to work/whatever activity I need to do

#Minimum UI
The solution which most naturally follows from the points of friction above is to allow people just start a timer and then come back to fill in the details later (project/colour code, description and other options). This could be done either immediately following the stopping of the timer (although this would just be displacing the effort from the start of the timer to the end) or at a later date such as the end of each day or during a weekly review.
But what percentage of people would actually bother going back to fill in the details? And in general, time tracked without any details or categorisation isn’t particularly useful for the productivity.

[Sketches to be inserted here]

[nelsonic]

Agree that an MVP.md is a good idea.
Especially if sections are linked to issues (road-map style) which allow us to track progress.
All of the features you have listed are available in the API already.
We could build a simple UI together tomorrow quite easily...

[iteles]

Spent some time doodling possible UIs (and UX) for the MVP alpha this short list of questions (re)surfaced which need to be answered pre-MVP (see Open Questions in MVP.md for further open questions):

• Does the user need to press anything to submit/confirm the description of the timer?
• How does the user edit the timer description? Tap to edit?
• Do we need both an email and a password requested on the main screen or just an email?
• Do we allow anonymous users to have run more than one timer before they have to register to save them?
• What is the best way to show a user they are logged in?
• What is the simplest way to deal with remembering users so they don't have to constantly log in at MVP or should we be doing this at this stage at all?

[nelsonic]

#winning :-)

[iteles]

Closing this issue because we are starting the UI from scratch with fresh eyes and less focus on timers only. Ref: #266