Over the past few weeks, Simpleology 5 has been slowly rolling out to our over one million registered users.  Meanwhile, our developers have been busy busy bees.

With the rave reviews we’ve been getting for 5.0 across the net, it might be tempting to rest on our cyber-laurels.  Pah!  Tempting if we were lazy.  Fortunately for us, we are all avid users of our own software and therefore relentless productivity machines as a result.

Here are a few of the new features you’ll notice when you log in today (that weren’t there when we launched 5.0).

Search

Look in the upper right corner and you’ll see an unassuming little magnifying glass. Click on it and you’ll see version 1 of our new Search tool.  It’s pretty fast and pretty fancy, but it’s only going to get better.  It will search across all of your Simpleology data (Targets, Lists, Dream Catcher, everything …)

Options Overlay Redux

The Options Overlay was, and is, unique.  It’s a totally new UI concept that began here. Generation 1 was good, but there were a few issues.  Dragging and dropping was clunky.  Clicking on links was not easy.  It didn’t work well in mobile.  It wasn’t as well organized as it could have been.  The Redux solves all those issues and more.  Try it out.

Dojo 2.0

The belt training has changed everything. We now have a systematic, step by step, way of taking you from “total novice” to “Simpleology Black Belt.”  The first version had a few issues.  The videos weren’t working in mobile.  We weren’t considerate of the hearing impaired and left out Closed Captioning.  It was hard to know how long a training session would last.  The training was excessively repetitious.  There was no way to control the videos.

All of that has been addressed and more.

Now, granted the repetition was by design.  Many folks think “I get it” but then after watching a video a 2nd or 3rd time realize they missed a few key concepts completely. So, there is still going to be a bit of repetition, but not as much.  As a general rule:

- There will be short and long versions of training sessions

- You’ll need to complete the long version a few times (strategically timed) and the short version several times (to ensure you demonstrate the skill)

- You will be able to fast forward through videos, but only after a few forced repetitions

Frankly, we were reluctant to make those changes.  Since in time we’ll allow folks to use their Simpleology belt as a credential, and will allow others to verify that credential, we do have some responsibility to ensure folks have actually demonstrated a skill before advancing.  But at the same time, we want to make the system flexible enough for those who have different learning styles.

It’s a delicate situation, and no matter how we slice it, there will be those who will game the system.  Given that that’s unavoidable in any scenario (already we’ve heard rumblings of people offering “pre-loaded Simpleology Black Belt accounts” generated by cheap labor) we opted for a good balance of flexibility and forced skill demonstration.

…

As always, there is much much more to come, folks.  As always, this happens by combining your requests with our plans, so keep those requests comin’!  We are listening.

tl;dr  We’ve added some essential new enhancements to the Mental Lockbox.  You can log in and check them out now.  This is a significant update, but nothing compared to the what’s ahead.

Life for software architects could be described as “one anticlimax to the next.”   By the time we tell you about a new feature, we’re already working on the next.  But every now and then that “next new thing” represents such a “giant leap for nerdkind” that we can barely muster the energy to talk about today’s release.

Today’s release for example …  The Mental Lockbox just got a lot better.  I mean a lot better.  Log in.  Check it out.  You’ll find all this and more:

• Finally …  Search.
• Greatly enhanced navigation controls.
• Ability to perform “Mass Actions” on selected tasks.  For example “Move to Daily Targets,” “Set Reminders,” and more …

It’s actually some pretty beautiful stuff.  Maybe some of the most elegant enhancements yet.   But compared to what’s next …

It’s child’s play.   More about that next week.