Last Thursday we announced support for public boards and UI updates to the beta AgileZen. Below are the important UI changes that were introduced:
Minimized Header
A major goal of our product redesign was to simplify and beautify the AgileZen interface and experience. Our latest iteration focused on getting us closer to that goal. The minimized, simplified header is a way to keep the view clean by displaying only what is 100% necessary.
The header content is fairly self-explanatory, with the major nuance being the new menu toggle button (top left hand corner in the above image). This button allows you to toggle between displaying and hiding the column containing the menu and activity stream. Here is a view of the button in its “on” state, with the menu column showing:
In addition, we received feedback that the iconography was confusing, so we added corresponding text to each menu item.
Fully-Collapsable Menu and Activity Stream
As shown above, the menu and activity stream are now 100% collapsable. In the previous UI, the activity stream was, at its very minimal, an icon-heavy view that was not as utilitarian as we would have otherwise hoped. The new activity stream is fully collapsable for a more compact, beautiful board view (we’ll get to that in a moment), and was made easier to read with the light-on-dark contrast scheme. This was done in order to make it obvious that the board and activity stream column are separate entities.
Moving the menu to the same column allowed us to further simplify the header and allow for easier navigation throughout the application. The collapsable menu persists over all views, including the “Planning” and “Settings” screens.
Updated Focus Panel
The changes to our focus panel were less extreme and obvious than those made to the header, menu, and activity stream. Our main focus in updating the focus panel’s UI was to make the entire system more intuitive and user-friendly. The view itself is cleaner than the previous iteration, while maintaining the essential functionality of interacting with individual card items.
Support for Public Boards
Public Boards allow you to share a read-only copy of our AgileZen board with anyone with an internet connection. On the “Basics” tab of the “Settings Screen”, you now have the ability to set your board as “Public”, which in turn gives you the project URL which can be shared with anyone, regardless of whether they have an AgileZen account or not.
These Public Boards help us on our way supporting Rally for Impact, a foundation dedicated to offering assistance to non-profits, citizen engineers, students, and open-source collaborators.
