Thymer interview – tasks made simple
“Knowing when to compromise. (…) Because the list of things we want to do grows
faster than we can possibly manage, we have to make compromises at
every point.”
Thymer is a webware that allows you to manage your tasks with powerful but simple tools.
We reviewed Thymer recently. You can find the review here, their website here and the interview below.
Anggackt: What makes Thymer the best out there?
Diederik: In other applications the actual task list is buried somewhere inside
the application. In order to get to it you have to click through all
kinds of windows and that kind of friction really adds up throughout
the day. At that point it becomes tempting to just use pen and paper
and add your asks to the application at the end of the day. With
Thymer we focus on getting tasks into the system easily, and an
instant overview of all tasks and changes. Essentially, we want to
keep Thymer as simple as possible while being able to answer the most
important questions: “What should I be doing next?”, “What are my team
members working on?”, “What happened in the past couple of days?”.
Some of the things we think make Thymer stand out:
1. One page design. When at all possible, we let people stay on a
single page. This makes getting started with Thymer really easy, and
you can gradually learn new features. With a lot of other apps you can
get lost in page after page. With Thymer you spend almost all your
time on the task list page. You can add projects, delegate tasks, view
discussions and plan your tasks, all from one page.
2. Smart input (natural language processing). You can type something
as simple as “@Peter @phone get back to Barbara @today”, and with that
simple statement you delegate a task to Peter, let him know he has to
make a phone call, and that it has to be done today. Once you get the
hang of tags you don’t even have to think about it, and that makes
entering new tasks so much easier.
3. Lightweight interface. We show only the important things. The tasks
are the most important thing, and Thymer gets out of your way whenever
possible.
We also wrote about this on http://www.thymer.com/why/ – for those who
want to read more.
Anggackt: Time management web apps are many. How is Thymer facing this
competition?
Diederik: We don’t worry much about the competition. Competition is healthy (it
forces us to make software people want) and you find a lot of people
read blogs about upcoming software, try it out, and so on. It’s a good
environment to be in, because there are so many applications out
there. If we really loved another product out there, we’d simply have
subscribed to that. We tried everything, and we simply weren’t
satisfied with the options, so we built Thymer the way we think is
best. And luckily, we’re not the only ones who think this way: the
feedback we’ve received so far has been almost exclusively positive.
That said, Thymer is probably not for everybody, exactly because we do
things differently. We happily refer people to the competition if we
believe they’ll be happier there.
Anggackt: Tell us about the new features you launched recently.
Diederik: We cover almost all new features in detail on our blog (
www.stunf.com/blog). We’ve been working on branding (to make Thymer
fit better within organizations), permissions, and a way to access
multiple accounts from a single login.
Anggackt: And about the ones that are coming.
Diederik: I can’t reveal everything here, but we’re working on an iPhone
version, integration with calendars, an API (for 3rd party developers)
and much more. We have a list of at least 300 feature requests now, so
we’ll be busy for a while. We just have to be careful that the new
features don’t get in the way of Thymer’s simplicity and ease of use.
Anggackt: What’s the most important thing in development?
Diederik: Knowing when to compromise. Behind the scenes a lot is going on to
make Thymer work. Because the list of things we want to do grows
faster than we can possibly manage, we have to make compromises at
every point. If some solution is only slightly better but takes three
times the time to implement, we’re probably going for the quick
solution. On the other hand, you also have to know where you can never
compromise, especially areas such as Security, Backups and customer
service.
There are a lot of other important things though: never assume
something works, be willing to delete large chunks to work, and to
keep the user interface clean, and of course: always focus on the user
experience.
Anggackt: What’s Thymer’s goal? And focus?
Diederik: In the short term we want to grow Thymer, add features, support more
platforms, and in general: just make it even better. We have big plans
for the long term, but for that Thymer has to work out first. As long
as we keep listening to our customers, and as long as Thymer retains
its unique look and feel I think we stand a good chance. Wish us luck. :)
Anggackt: Thank you for your time!
Diederik: No problem. Thank you!
About feen
Feen is a web enthusiastic. He really likes Internet technology, web applications, email and grapes.
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