Google Keep

 

Today I thought I'd go ahead and make some design changes to Google's quick-note app, 'Keep'. If you've not seen it yet, it's a clean post-it note style app that allows you to save snaps, make checklists, and as of a recent update, set a 'note as a reminder' with time and location. It's a really nice app - look and feel is right, and the functionality is super simple. My only beef with it is that it might be a little too simple.  What you see is very much what you get and what you're limited to.  There is a website version that sync's all your notes so you can access them on a computer, but it's mostly not used because people who use Keep don't know it exists and even if you do, you have to type in a URL to get to it. It’s only mentioned in the settings blurb in the app - there’s no direct link to it from either Google drive or the top toolbar on Google sites where you might expect it. You could say the web interface isn't all that important, since the apps function is 'quick notes' mainly to act as reminders on the go, but Google already has Google Now, Tasks, and Calendar to make reminders and lists with - Google Keep is trying to do just a little bit more - it's trying to be Evernote.

  

 Evernote is Keeps major 3rd party competitor. It pre-dated Google's app by quite a margin and is far richer in features while still being clean and attractive. they both have great widgets for Android, and they both sync to the cloud, let you access your notes on the web, and let you search the notes. But Evernote has a web clipping extension, a great doodle/handwriting mode, folders, tags, and, well a lot more. Keep fans will tell me that Keep is intentionally simple - it’s the very simplicity that makes it the better app, and adding all these many extra modes and methods would clutter the menu and distract from its main purpose - you’re writing a post-it note, not a novella! This brings me to the crux of my problem with Keep. In theory, something is either a quick note or it isn't, but in reality many great projects start out as a post-it note. Then the post-it note gets filled in every corner, with writing squeezed on it wherever it can fit, and then another post-it note it stuck on the bottom to give a little more room, and eventually someone sits down to type it all out into a proper document. Ideas are organic, and they evolve suddenly and unpredictably throughout your day, week, month… from tiny acorns do mighty oak trees grow as the old saying goes. In the digital age, I shouldn't need to re-create my post-it note ideas in a bigger document tool, especially when Keep is already based on Googles office tool suite anyway, Google Docs. So Evernote is too much, and Keep is too basic. Perhaps asking for a solution that fits all scenarios is asking the impossible? Only it isn't - in fact I think the answer is such a simple tweak to Keep that it pains me to notice it's absence.  Just a reeeeeeeally simple addition to both Keep and the Google Drive site would bring post-it note perfection. On the Keep app, there’d just be one new button at the top of a note:

 

Spot the difference

If you press that new button on the top row, the Note would vanish from Keep, and appear as a standard Google Doc document, allowing you to edit it on your PC (or indeed in the Drive App on your phone) like so…

 

And on the Google Drive main page you add a toggle near the top that lets you switch between Drive and Keep, much like Gmail has for mail and contacts, or perhaps in the new Google styling there'd be a menu more like we see on Google+. That's it!  That's all the tweaking I'm going to do - the Keep fans are quite right after all, you can very quickly over complicate these things.  This solution means you've got access to all the rich features associated with word processing and  office suites when you want to move up to those, but keeps them conceptually and visually completely out of the picture when you're note only needs to remind you to "Get milk!".  I don't think it needs to be a reversible process really though I've got a lot of Drive docs that actually would be better suited in the Keep section - only I made those before Keep arrived.  In future though, I imagine the amount of clutter in my Drive list would diminish as smaller seeds of ideas never make it into the main store. If you like the idea, feel free to tell Google - in the mean time, I'm sticking with Evernote I guess.
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Phil
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