Behind-the-Scenes with Nate Fortin, SVP of Design at Evernote [AUDIO ONLY]

Hello and welcome to Getting More Done with Evernote, episode 16. I'm your host, Ray Sidney-Smith, Evernote user since 2009, Evernote Certified Consultant, and Evernote Regional Leader for North America. As you can imagine, I love Evernote, and with Getting More Done with Evernote, I hope to help everyone love Evernote, or at least enjoy digital note-taking a little more with each episode. As you may have noticed over the past several months, almost half a year, we have new Evernote apps on Apple iOS, macOS, Android, and Windows. With the new apps, Evernote has brought to fruition a new a new user experience. And so to discuss all the changes and why, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Nate Fortin, SVP of Design at Evernote, to discuss the design language Evernote went about developing, the process, and what those changes mean for users. We're also going to touch base on the release of the new feature Home in the next episode, and so keep an eye out for that. And now on to our interview with Nate Fortin. Welcome to Getting More Done with Evernote, Nate.

Oh, glad to be here, Ray. Thanks. I'm really looking forward to the conversation today.

Absolutely. And so right in with it, I wanted to talk about the, the, the redesign itself. What problem did Evernote face in deciding to do this redesign, and what guided your choices in making this redesign happen with Evernote?

Great question, Ray. There's really two problems that we faced up front that the redesign targeted. I think number one, we often refer to it as the 5-app problem. So we had 5 different apps, all with pretty dramatically different experiences. And that created a couple of problems. The first problem is for users, even if they're really familiar with one of the Evernote apps, whenever they switch context to another, let's say from desktop to mobile, they basically had to relearn how to get things done with the app. Because there was enough inconsistencies, the feature set was different enough, where they just really had to spend a lot of time reorienting themselves. So that's a problem that we needed to solve, and that became pretty clear to us. I think the second problem is, with 5 different applications, with 5 different code bases, we had to define and design and build everything 5 times. So every fix, every feature that we wanted to bring to the of the product was 5 times harder to accomplish. And so that problem had to be solved. And even that problem is a user problem as well, because users expect us to respond to their feedback and they expect us to evolve the product at a pace that's reasonable. And we were in a place where we weren't achieving that. So that was, those are 2 problems were kind of fundamentally at the heart of why we not just redesigned the applications, but also rebuilt them from the ground up to modernize them and to be able to ship on a more regular basis and move faster.

So of course, those seem like two really big problems that are really important for both Evernote and its users. What and how did you approach the process of going through this change? What was the, the challenge kind of ecosystem looking like for you as you said, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna take on this monumental task of redesigning from the ground up, what did that look like for you in terms of how you approached it?

Yeah, first, Ray, I think it's important to recognize that this wasn't a skin-deep problem that we were solving. We had to really go all the way down to the roots, from the architecture of the application as well as the fundamental design language system, and take a look at all of that in order to bring a more consistent, coherent experience to our users, and frankly, to, uh, to get to a more common code base that would allow us to ship at a higher velocity. So, you know, from an engineering standpoint, there was a lot at stake. We were, we were looking to unblock a lot of problems that were formerly unsolvable and make them tractable with a new modernized and consolidated codebase. I think from a design standpoint, it's an opportunity to really bring the best of Evernote to a single application. So what I mean by that is being able to look at each individual application and pick out what was working best and bring that forward into a more consolidated experience. So from a process standpoint, it always starts with our users. So we have tens of millions of users and they all use Evernote in a little bit different way. There's quite a wide range of use cases that people have for the product. And so understanding that and spending time with users was really the first step. I think because we're taking 5 pretty different experiences and consolidating them into just a couple of experiences, one for the large screen and one for the small screen, you know, there's a lot of hard choices in there. You know, ultimately, we were going to have to make changes for some of our users, and each of those decisions represents a trade-off. And ultimately, we tried to make the best choices there that were good for the largest population of users.

Yeah, so let's talk about some of the changes. There was quite a bit of research done, is what I'm hearing from you, in understanding how people were using Evernote in its old form and how that could be modified and kind of picking the best of breed and the most used features into this new system. And of course, there was the user experience changes, the user interface changes that really needed to occur. Let's talk about some of those examples and how you really made decisions about those things, first and foremost being the left navigation. Left navigation is different than it was before. What were some of those changes and why did you make those choices?

Well, I think the left navigation is a really good example because it really is at the heart of trying to deliver this more unified experience. It's something that each of the applications shares. A primary navigation allows you to move around the application and interact with your content. In the, the old application, there was a lot of differences even in the primary navigation. And I think that was sort of at the root of, you know, what we talked about earlier, having to relearn Evernote when you switch contexts. And so there was a lot of effort that went into bringing a single approach to the primary navigation so that as a, as a major surface area of the application, this kind of forms a thread that ties all the applications together. Our design goal was that as you move from mobile to desktop or from desktop to tablet, that you would immediately recognize your Evernote system and ultimately have a good idea of how to get started and how to get things done. And the primary navigation is a major part of, of that, and just consistency that we've brought to the new applications.

Something that's near and dear to my heart, of course, is tags. I know that we've talked about this in the past, you know, in the Evernote community about who uses tags and who uses notebooks and stacks to structure things. I use both. And tags, of course, have moved from where they were before to where they are now. So can you explain a little bit about where they've moved? And why they've moved there.

We know that this is a major change for our heavy tag users in particular, who have really established workflows and, and pretty strong habits around tagging notes. This is a core aspect of why they use Evernote and something that they really appreciate about the product. So I think these long-term users have gotten pretty used to the position at the top of the screen. And so there's a lot of habit built up around that position. And then The reality is, is our users appreciate that location because it's adjacent to a lot of related items in the note header, things like, for example, the note title. And these are things that elements that users change at the same time they're often editing tags. So that proximity is really helpful. So there's a lot of good things about the previous position at the top of the screen, but I'll say, you know, as a, heavy tag user yourself, Ray, I think you can, you might have a hard time believing this, but the reality is that the majority of Evernote users, they don't use tags at all. They find other tools within Evernote to organize their information. So whether that's using notebooks or just simply relying on search to find what they're looking for, tags just doesn't factor in to the way that they interact with the product. And so reserving space for tags in probably the most congested place in the interface, the note header, is at best unhelpful, helpful for those users. And given that they represent a majority, I think that was a major motivation for, for moving the tags out of that header into the bottom of the screen. But beyond that, you know, even for our tags users, you know, the bottom of the screen represents a much more uncontested space where you can kind of focus on tags and it enables us more real estate to work with as we start to add new capabilities to the product over time. You know, this is a really clear example of a place where there isn't necessarily a single best answer for every single user. And I think this is true in a lot of cases across the Evernote experience. But, you know, I also think we're not done with tags. I think what you've probably noticed over the course of the last several months, a number of improvements around tags coming into every release. And I think that's part of that newfound velocity that we were talking about earlier that the new products offer and that ability to evolve much more quickly You'll continue to see more improvements in that area, and our ultimate goal is to allow our users to be able to tailor that experience to really fit the way that they work with the product.

Well, one, I'm really sad that not more people use tags, and I'm gonna do my best to get more people using tags. But going forward, you shared these details about how we've gotten to where we are today with regard to the Evernote product, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what the future holds for Evernote. So in that sense, What does the future hold for Evernote in that case? And the apps that are a part of the product suite that are currently existing, kind of how do you want to bring these pieces together from a design aesthetic, feature parity, all of those things? What are you thinking about in that sense?

I mean, to be clear, there are still many features and refinements underway, and I think every few weeks you're going to see those come into the product and you're going to see Evernote just getting better and better from here. And I think that's really exciting. But we're not just looking to refine the core that we already have. We're also looking to move forward with innovation. I think that was a big goal of the redesign. And I think, you know, you can already see recently with the release of our home feature, some of the first pieces of that. And there's, there's more to come that will kind of build on and introduce new capabilities into the product. I think from a design standpoint, The way I would summarize it is I think there are really 3 keywords that I used to guide our work in the design team. I think the first is converge. We are working to deliver a unified, coherent experience across all devices. We want to deliver an experience that looks familiar and, and helps folks get the most out of the products with the least amount of work. And so there's going to continue to be work to bring that unified experience to users across all of these, these different ways that you can you can access your information. I think second, polish is the word. We want to get the details right. You're not only seeing new features and fixes come into every release, but you're also seeing little bits of polish here and there all across the application. And that continues to be a focus to ultimately make that core better and better and reduce the friction so that people can get more done. And then finally, invent. So the rebuild has really unlocked new opportunities for us to bring new capabilities to our users. And I think Home is really just the starting point. As I mentioned, you're going to see other features coming into the product that expand the surface area and provide brand new capabilities to the user. And you're also going to see how these things work together to deliver new functionality and new use cases that our users can take advantage of.

This is fantastic, and I really love the, the idea that now we're going to be able to see features and the way in which we use those features coming together in this confluence that I think is going to be really important for users going forward. And of course, I, like everybody else who has been using Evernote, has had to deal with this remarkable change, right? We still don't have full feature parity in the, in the program. There are things that need to still be fixed in Evernote, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the team tackle those this year and into the future. So penultimately, pun intended, what would you say to anyone who has been using Evernote, decided You know what, this is just not working and they've left, or maybe they're using multiple tools now because they're vacillating between them, they're worried. What would you say to them that would help them reconsider Evernote?

Well, I mean, I think you'd agree with me, Ray. I think it's actually a really interesting time to come back to Evernote and to check out what's happening, in part because of the new velocity that we all see and just the degree things are getting fixed. New features are coming in. It's really exciting, I think, not just to see what the new apps offer that the old apps didn't, but also to see brand new things that users haven't seen before in the application and be able to experiment with that and see how they fit into your life and help you get things done. So, you know, I think in the next year, as we kind of go forward, if you think about since launch, if we kind of fast forward a year, I think you're gonna see a remarkably different looking Evernote that has just a lot more to offer.

Absolutely. I'm super excited about that, and I'm going to have you back in the next episode to talk about Evernote and its new feature Home and some of those design choices. But like with every new interview on Getting More Done with Evernote, I have started this quick notes. I made Ian Small do it the last time, our first time, and I'm gonna be giving you some rapid-fire questions questions to close out our time together. And so, are you ready?

Of course.

All right, here we go. First, what's your favorite operating system to use Evernote?

So, you know, as part of my job, I actually have to spend time in all of the operating systems. And so the reality is that that's a little bit like asking me, like, which of your children is your favorite? The reality is I use Windows, I use Mac, I use Android, I use iOS, and I actually appreciate all of them. And so I don't really have a favorite.

That's perfectly fine.

You know what's interesting there, to add to that though is with the redesign, there's so much more consistency that there's actually relatively speaking, a lot less different between the applications. And so you have a very similar experience as you move across those different platforms. And I think that's one of the things that is great about the new app.

What's your favorite Evernote feature?

My favorite Evernote feature is probably the camera. I think on mobile, because it just can be really magical. You can use your phone as a scanner for the world. It's this great way to capture things are outside and bring them into Evernote where you can work with them. And so a lot of people don't know that our founder, Stefan, was heavily involved in some of the early OCR technologies, and that's baked into the Evernote product. And so just really good at that. And so it's always been a major strength of the product. So I think if you haven't checked that out, I think it's really cool to be able to take a picture of a whiteboard or, or a document and then be able to search those images later, even if there's handwriting.

I do that all the time. So what was your first Evernote note?

So that's funny. I guess the reality is, you know, if I think back, my first Evernote note was probably the Welcome to Evernote note in 2009. But after that, I mean, the first note that I created, probably a meeting note. I think for my job, I have to switch context a lot and keep a lot of information that, you know, coming from different sources. Straight. And Evernote really helps me to do that. When you kind of can capture and organize these things in a way that you can get back to them later. And it definitely keeps me on track. And I still use it primarily for that today.

How many notes do you have in Evernote?

If I just check right now, I've got almost 25,000 notes. So the bulk of those are on my business account. So the information that I capture as part of my professional experience. So almost 16,000 or 17,000 notes are around that. So things like meetings and capturing aspects of the design process, research, all that kind of good stuff, to-dos. And then on the personal side, I have, you know, closer to 8,000 notes, something like that. And I use Evernote to really capture all those paper documents so that I don't have to store them in a in a file cabinet and keep track of, you know, family affairs and vacations and pretty much everything that you need for information. So, yeah, about, I guess, about 25,000 notes. It's getting up there.

Yeah, I know, right? It does, it does, uh, build over time. So in closing out, what do you think is Evernote's most underrated feature? The feature that you think, man, if everybody just knew that Evernote could do this thing, but not many people use it.

It will be interesting to see how you respond to this, but I, you know, I think sometimes the most underrated feature is just the editor itself, because it's almost, it's right under your nose, but ultimately it's the heart of Evernote and it's what makes everything else work, right? It starts with being able to capture information and ideas from your head and from the outside world and put it into the product. And the editor is really what makes that happen. And I think in particular, the new editor brings a lot of new improvements to that experience, but even there, we're just getting started and there's a lot more coming on that. So I see that also as one of the biggest opportunities in, in the product and a place to watch this year for sure.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for answering our rapid-fire quick notes. And, uh, with that, thank you so much for being here on Getting More Done with Evernote, Nate.

Glad to be here, Ray. It was fun.

That was Nate Fortin, Senior Vice President of Design at Evernote. And so check out our next interview, which will be coming out about Evernote Home in the feed. That's all for now. To learn more and follow me, please visit gettingmoredonewithevernote.com. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith, Evernote Certified Consultant for Getting More Done with Evernote. Here's to your productive life.