We've released another great feature: A bigger (literally!) and better dashboard.

The Project Dashboard is the front page of each Woobius project where you can get a quick 'at-a-glance' view of recent activities. It's the facebook-activity-feed equivalent for your project.

Goodbye old...

Just like the early incarnations of the facebook-activity-feed, our original dashboard design featured a "statistics-like" project activity feed, broken into three simple parts:

• Recent Drop Box uploads (Work-in-progress)
• Recent Vault issues (Formal Drawing Issue)
• General Project Activities

While our users loved its usefulness, they felt it can be a bit intimidating at first, especially if you joined the project mid-way through when it is fully populated with activities.

So back we went to the drawing board to see how to make the dashboard even better...

Codename project book?

When developing the new design, we asked ourselves a question - What is the Project Dashboard to our users other than being a "project feed"? After all it's the first thing they see when entering a project. After some long debates - most of which happened in my head and well into the night, I realised the answer had been staring at me in the face! The answer was something I coined the Project Book concept...

Since the Dashboard is the "front page" of every project, then if a project is a "book", then the Dashboard is both the "cover" and the "contents" page, not just an activity feed.

Just like books are easily identifiable by their covers, the dashboard should feature images of the project. Also, it should have clear "chapter" headings so even first time users can quickly find the information they need. 

I quickly mocked up the idea, codenamed it "Project Book" (short for project-as-a-book) and showed it to the team.

They loved it. We decided to show it to some users. They asked us when it would be ready - always a good sign. Excited by the enthusiasm, we felt the idea that the Dashboard is the cover and content page for the project was one that people could instantly identify with.

Hello new... ;-)

After two months of hard work by the team (and our interns), here's what the new project dashboard on Woobius looks like.

On it, you will still find the recent folders and activities (though reformatted somewhat to be more useful), and you will also find a brand new "project images" section, where you can upload photos and renderings of the project. We warmly encourage you to do so! Our testing has shown that project members are far more likely to use Woobius effectively when a project image has been set.

We would love to hear your feedback, so don't hesitate to get in touch at support@woobius.com

 or leave a comment below!