I don’t know if it’s a muscle memory thing as a longtime user of Legacy Clear (that’s certainly part of it), but when creating a new task or editing an existing one, my instinct is to tap anywhere to finish adding/editing it. With New Clear, this automatically tries to add another new task, requiring an additional tap to tell the app I’m not trying to add anything else. While I can see how the new version may be better when adding multiple tasks at one time, most often I’m adding a single item that I thought of while doing other things, or making a quick edit, and the extra “no, don’t do that” tap feels like I’m stepping on my shoelace, so to speak.
I’m going to try to get accustomed to tapping “Done,” but the convenience of tapping anywhere on the screen rather than a specific point makes a bigger difference than I expected!
Hey Joey, first of all great to hear you it overall!
There’s definitely some muscle memory involved. I realize it’s a kind of extreme situation after ten years of barely any changes, then all this stuff in the new Clear.
If you could update us on how it feels after a week or so adjustment that would be really great. It is for the quickly adding multiple items case you mentioned, and it’s -very- nice for that. (When you’re adding an item, you can tap below or above it to quickly add another.) Though there’s a bug we need to fix with the keyboard animating between those.
Curious to hear what other testers think of it as well, maybe some can chime in who have been using it for longer if they’ve adjusted, or if they still miss it.
As someone who’s been using the beta for a few months, I’ve gotten used to the new behavior. However it also never bothered me that much in the beginning.
If this feature does get reverted, I think the “done” button should be replaced by “return” so there’s still a way to add multiple tasks quickly.
Swapping these behaviors does have the advantage of the larger touch target aligning with the more common action (adding only one item / finishing adding items). This mostly has no downside because when creating multiple items your fingers need to stay in “keyboard mode” anyway, so hitting the return key to add a new item isn’t really more difficult. The disadvantage is that this would be less consistent with how the rest of the app operates.
A solution that keeps large touch targets for all actions and is perfectly consistent: If swipe down to add above and swipe up to add below were implemented across the app. Users could easily add multiple items by just swiping up/down after typing out the first one. This would also then match how new items are added at the top/bottom of lists. Tapping anywhere after typing would hide the keyboard, which does seems like the more natural behavior imo.
Also I forgot to mention that you can swipe down instead of tapping, and it will go back to the list like you want. This is actually what I do most of the time.
You articulated this better than I did, but essentially this is what I was trying to say
I’m confident that however it ends up I’ll be able to get used to it, but to me it feels more intuitive to use “done” (or “return”) to add a subsequent task, and tap anywhere to hide the keyboard.
I wasn’t aware of the swipe down gesture you mentioned, I’ll try getting used to that as well! Thanks!
Your last post reads kind of like our inner thoughts while working on Clear design haha.
My first thought is we should probably surface/polish the swipe down gesture while keyboard is up. Not obvious and feels kind of janky with the animation.
I think the main reason why we have been going with quick tap above/below is to mirror the new ‘tap to add’ functionality which feels nicely symmetric. (E.g. you can now tap at the top of your list to add an item there too, or the bottom.) But this app being such an interconnected thing, that decision and others have ripple effects and it can turn into a real puzzle.
But yeah this is one I want to keep an eye on as we get some more testers on board, especially ones who have been using old Clear forever. We want to have conviction with the new design and what we feel is great about it, but there’s the reality that Clear’s old design is a very cozy place for our current users and it changing a lot overnight will be innately uncozy too an extent, even if it’s good changes. So it’s a real needle to thread!
it overall!