How did the Slife 2.0 project get started?

The Slife 2.0 journey started back in November 2007. Back then, we got in touch with a large number of our users and discovered that while Slife was a fun app, it wasn’t as useful as people had hoped. Most people were using Slife as a time tracking tool and Slife left a lot to be desired in that department. That wasn’t too surprising to us, since Slife wasn’t conceived to help people keep track of their time. It was originally designed as a personal information management tool.

So, we looked at each other, took a deep breath and realized that we had to dive head first into a complete Slife redesign if the app was to remain useful to people. And we did exactly that, putting many other initiatives on hold, such as Slife for Windows and Slifeshare. Slife for the Mac is our bread & butter and we felt that we had to get it completely right.

The great benefit of starting from scratch was that we were able to build Slife on top of many new Apple technologies that simply weren’t available the first time Slife was developed, back when it was called Onlife. Many of these new technologies, such as Core Data, offer tremendous benefits in terms of performance, one of the areas where Slife was lacking. At the end of the day Slife 2.0 is a more compact and focused app, and it represents a huge improvement over previous versions.

Like with any other software application, there are many ways to make Slife 2.0 even better. Over the next few months we will continue to improve it, and we would like the community to be an integral part of the process. If you would like to participate, join the discussion! We would love to hear from you.

It’s April, and I am happy to say that Slife 2.0 is pretty much done – artwork, visualizations, everything. We are doing some tests at the moment and addressing small issues that are popping up here and there. Overall, I am very happy with how it’s been running under 10.5.

As I mentioned before, we worked with Enhanced Labs to design a new set of icons for this version of Slife. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the new Slife 2.0 icon:

It looks good, huh? I like it. I think it reflects the new focus on time very well.

Coming up next week, some screenshots, more info about our plans and how you can get your hands on the app early – we will start a private beta program for Slife 2.0 very soon.

Slife 2.0 is coming in April, but in the meantime, I thought I would write a little bit about the app’s new workflow and focus. The app will be all about productivity and helping you understand where your spend your time.

Since we are rebuilding Slife from scratch, one of our goals has been to try to simplify the user experience and workflow. The new Slife 2.0 workflow is based on 3 concepts: Activities, Applications and Items. Here’s what it all means:

Activities are all the things that you do when you use your computer. So, an Activity can be pretty much anything, from “Reading News” to “Checking Email. You can create as many Activities as you would like in Slife 2.0. Another thing that you can do with Activities is set “Goals” for them. So, you can specify that you would like to “Watch YouTube videos” for 20 minutes everyday as a Goal.

Applications are the programs that you run on your Mac. No big surprises here. Once you inform Slife which applications you would like it to track, you are ready to go. In the new upcoming Slife, you will be able to associate Activities with Applications (e.g Mail.app Application with the “Checking email” Activity). That way, Slife will always know what you are doing without your constant input.

Items refer to web sites that you visit, documents that you work on and much more. You can create Items, such as “www.nytimes.com” and then associate them with Activities like you do with Applications.

Activities, Applications and Items, that’s it! In addition to this new workflow, we are also going to have a revamped UI, some new visualizations and icon designs – we are working with the very talented folks at Enhanced Labs for some of our design work.

Being a big fan of information visualizations techniques, I am always on the look out for great new ways to present information. This is specially true when I am working on a data rich project like Slife 2.0.

Recently I’ve come across visual complexity, a wonderful catalog of visualizations categorized by subject, method, trend, year and more. It was set up by Manuel Lima while he was a student at Parsons School of Design.

It’s definitely worth a visit.

Max Kiesler, founder and principal of Ideacodes, goes over various time-based visualizations. There are some excellent ones. I love the Sputnik Legacy and the British History Timeline.

Slife also made the list (thanks Max!).