How we developed our Visual Knowledge Base: Scrintal Update 2022–2023
“I don’t understand what Scrintal is.”
“I can’t leave my old stack behind.”
“Scrintal feels like bending over backward.”
The first feedback was candid. We were creating a new concept, merging whiteboards with knowledge systems. It was unfamiliar, confusing, and even ugly. We asked our friends and family and selected individuals. To be really honest, we weren’t even sure if we had built something that could be useful to anyone else apart from our team.
The product looked like this, and we knew it lacked all the UX practices one has to follow.
After many user interviews, tests, and iterations, we changed countless parts of the product and had numerous long days at the office. All was possible thanks to great people who never ceased to provide feedback to us!
Here’s what we did in the last year 👇
📚 One step closer to being a Visual Library
We pushed the boundaries of Scrintal’s capabilities and allowed putting different elements on boards, not only the cards! The concept of “Boards on Boards” emerged, enabling users to nest boards within one another for more detailed project structuring.
We also made it possible to add web links to boards. To overview the weblinks, we introduced the “Web Links” page that facilitates the management of online references.
🔗 Visual Links
One of the most significant additions was introducing the visual links. Visual links provided a more interactive and engaging way to connect related content. This update meant that Scrintal has two ways to connect different elements, by visually linking and in-text linking. Our innovative tweak on visual links is that they are also displayed in cards as bidirectional links. 🤯
We also allowed reversing the visual links which actually meant reversing the direction of the bi-directional links. This addition was essential to provide a fresh perspective on element connections, and meant that there is no need to open the cards and search for the links in text to change link directions.
📚 Export All
Now, you can export all of your cards in Markdown format! This means you’ve got way more freedom to handle your content however you want. Plus, it makes it super easy to use your content in different apps that works with Markdown. So, get ready for a whole bunch of cool new ways to customize and collaborate!
🎢 How one navigates in Scrintal changed drastically
We wanted to make Scrintal much easier to navigate. So, we brought a new sidebar so you can access any card and board easily. The sidebar has Starred items, Cards, Boards, and Tags pages to simplify navigation and search.
We also brought new desk tools 🎉 Now you can easily add different elements to a board (even add a board on a board 😉) and also create an empty board.
The full-text search and the introduction of the spotlight search transformed the experience entirely. Suddenly, finding not just whole cards but bits and pieces of information became a breeze. This was a major upgrade, as one can now search within cards and also among weblinks!
🌟 We changed how Scrintal looks and feels
We updated our UI and welcomed our users with a minimal look and feel. The new UI brought a refreshed visual identity, introducing new icons and a neutral color palette.
Thanks to feedback, we redesigned our cards, card windows, and our canvas. Folded cards opened up new possibilities for organization.
We brought an action bar highlighting the most used actions, and interacting with cards became much more straightforward. The new action bar emerged as a powerful tool, enabling our users to interact with cards, columns, and text elements seamlessly. This feature-rich bar allows you to toggle between different card looks, update card colors, duplicate cards, and edit card titles without leaving the current view. We also enable editing card titles without the need to open the cards, which streamlines the workflow further.
🖼 Onboarding templates
We brought templates to encourage a quick start. There are so many ways to use a Scrintal board, and we aimed to inspire the new users so they get value from Scrintal immediately!
💻 Improved Desktop apps
The desktop applications now gets updated without any user action necessary. You can now follow these updates at our dedicated “Release Notes” page.
Apart from these, we also have a new referral program 👋 You can give away discounts to your friends, family, or colleagues while also earning special rewards for yourself.
What’s next
Our journey throughout 2023 was dedicated to our users’ evolving needs and our goal to revolutionise the way people engage with research, thinking, and writing while making these processes more enjoyable and rewarding than ever before.
We are experimenting with AI and various integrations to make Scrintal integral in the tool ecosystem. Further, to realize our vision to build the perfect tool to go from brainstorming to final artifacts, we will focus on the looks of the boards and make magic there 🌟
We are excited to evolve Scrintal in the months and years to come, continuing to shape the landscape of digital productivity.
👾🕹️👾 You choose what’s next:
[1] Check out what we’re building — Scrintal
[2] Aligned with our purpose? Join our Community Slack to learn all the news, connect with other users, and ask questions ✨
[3] Follow our updates on X
