Simple just works

We recently reached out to our customers with a survey on how and why they use DoneDone. We received lots of informative feedback, but one thing really stood out.When we asked why they chose DoneDone, the clear top answer was because it is a simple and easy-to-use product. This wasn't a multiple choice question; it was free-form. Yet, words like easy, clean, simple, and friendly came up almost six times more than the next highest set of reasons.

We also asked our customers, "What one feature would help make DoneDone even more valuable to you?" Given that features are often the antidote to simplicity, we weren't surprised to see no single feature dominated---the responses were all over the map. In fact, we received over 100 different feature requests, with no single request mentioned more than four times. Five customers said just to leave DoneDone alone.

Simplicity over "it just works"

I've never liked the now overly-applied mantra "it just works" because that usually implies something being simple on the surface, but wildly complicated under-the-hood. And, ultimately, things that "just work" eventually don't work. They get slower, buggier, and are replaced by the next thing that now, really, just works.

While there are some technical complexities to our product (as there are with any piece of software), there are very few things about DoneDone that are inherently complex to explain. We prefer simplicity over letting you know something  just works. It's clear to us that customers are still eager to pay just for simplicity---simplicity in design and in features. That's what we've done and what we'll keep doing.

So, what's next for DoneDone?

Our next set of features aren't groundbreaking nor particularly innovative.  They're just sensible additions that add on more flexibility without sacrificing simplicity. They're the ones we've heard over and over again from customers who contact us.

• We're about to release a project admins feature this month. This will allow you to grant admin privileges to specific people by project, whereas currently you can only grant admin privileges on an account level.
• After that, we'll work on a better way to mark issues as duplicates. Some of you have also asked about merging two of the same issues together. We'll spend some time researching and designing the simplest way to do this.
• We've also had plenty of requests for more powerful filtering capabilities. Many of you have asked for a way to filter out certain parameters. For instance, you want to see all issues that don't have a specific tag, or don't have a specific status. We'll be augmenting this in the near future too.

Thanks for sticking with us---and our simple nature---for the last six years!