Monthly Archives: September 2015

Using animation to help users understand canvases can be attached to cards

We have been cautiously adding animation to the Kerika app — as noted previously — where we think it helps people understand the results of their actions, and why a visual context just changed as a result of something they did.

One such place is when you add a canvas to a card: we added a “blow-up” animation effect to help users understand that they are opening up a new canvas.

To complement this, we added a “collapse” animation when you navigate up from a canvas to the card that contains it, whether you do that by clicking on your browser’s Back button or by using the Kerika breadcrumbs that appear just above the canvas:

Using breadcrumbs to navigate
Using breadcrumbs to navigate

This collapsing animation effect helps reinforce the idea that the canvas you just left was attached to a particular card, and now you are back up a level and viewing all the attachments on that card, including the canvas you were just viewing.

Adding a Google Map to your Kerika canvas

Did you know that you can embed a Google Map in your Kerika Whiteboards? It’s easy: just copy the Google Map’s URL:

Adding a Google Map to Canvas
Adding a Google Map to Canvas

And paste it into the dialog box that appears when you click on the “Add Web Content” button on your canvas toolbar:

Add Web Content
Add Web Content

Kerika automatically figures out the URL refers to a Google Map, and shows you an embedded map on your canvas:

Example of embedded Google Map
Example of embedded Google Map

You can do the same thing with card attachments, for your Task Boards and Scrum Boards: Kerika shows a small thumbnail of the map in the list of attachments on your card:

Example of attached Google Map
Example of attached Google Map

 

UI tweak: removing the “Add member” button from card details

As part of our work on combining tags and colors, we have been cleaning up parts of the Kerika user interface that had minor inconsistencies.

One such inconsistency — in our view — was that you were able to add people to a project team from within the card details dialog itself:

Adding people to a team
Adding people to a team

This button has been there in Kerika for a very long time, but it doesn’t really make sense to have this capability within the card details dialog: it just isn’t the best place to decide to add someone to a project team.

Instead, in our new layout the Project Settings dialog consolidates all the board management in one place, including adding people to a team, changing someone’s role within a team, and removing someone from a team: