Hey There Coda Team,
First of all, big fan of the product. I’ve been using it for over a year now and have moved most of my personal productivity and professional project management, goal setting, etc to Coda.
I haven’t been able to move away from tools like WorkFlowy / Roam however because each time I want to jot something down or reference a note I’ve made, I find it to be much more cumbersome, slow, and often have to reauthenticate which really ruins my “flow.”
This problems tend to be exacerbated in situations where my connection might not be good or my iPhone is trying to figure or whether or not it wants to use WiFi or my cell data.
Example of a very common scenario which has a LOT of friction:
- Opening app to reference something like a grocery list as I walk into the store and having to wait 30+ seconds for the parent doc to load.
- The majority of the time, after waiting for it to load, the app will freeze or land me on the sign in page of the app.
- I now have to reauthenticate which will take me another 20-30 seconds, more if Google wants me to 2FA - now I have to break out my Authenticator or wait for a text / email.
- After all that trouble, I’m probably not in the doc that I want and have to switch docs a few times to find the one I’m looking for. These docs do not load quickly (sometimes 5 or more seconds between them).
If I stick with it and get the doc open, great! Can now go about my shopping / take my note, what have you, but I’m definitely frustrated at this point and think about going back to roam / WorkFlowy for anything that I need to be able to engage quickly or where speed is important.
Additionally, no one wants to wait on me to continue the meeting or get into the store - when they ask what I’m using and I say Coda, I imagine it’s going to discourage them from trying it.
Anyway, not sure how the app is built, but would love to see the offline / background performance and auth issues improve.
Additionally, infinite lists and the ability to make buttons / actions more integrated to a mobile experience would be a huge wins IMO.
Happy to provide further feedback if helpful. I’m not sure if this type of thing is already on your radar but felt compelled to post after experiencing it again.