I reviewed project management system Teamwork Live a little while ago on Gizbuzz. It didn’t get a good review; despite an excellent, possibly best in class feature set, the UI was a usability disaster. At the time, I said:

Despite this [good feature set], I did not like Teamwork Live, for one simple reason. It suffers from appalling UI design. When using it, I had the feeling that it was created by some fantastic developers able to execute complex features, but that no designers had been involved at any stage. The whole system almost always behaves counter-intuitively, without any obvious reason for doing so. 

Tuyen, the founder of Teamwork Live got in contact, and I have since done some consulting for them [proceed with caution!], laying out specific problems and putting forward ideas for how they could improve. Last week they launched a new version, which is significantly better. I would describe the UI as now neutral (this is a good place to be): it allows intuitive access to all the features, it makes good use of space and does not hinder the user in any way. In my last review I complained that I wasn’t aware of what was contained in each tab. TWL have managed to cut the number of tabs down from 7 to 5, each tab with a meaningful name, making it obvious what each one does. If that isn’t enough, a simple mouse over will display all of the sub-items of that tab.

TWL takes a dual approach to project management; personal and team. Each user has a Personal Workspace and a Team Workspace. I have found that this works nicely, as it makes sense to organise both areas using the same tool, from the point of view of integration. As far as I know this is unique; whilst Zoho have both Planner and Projects, the two do not integrate. This innovative approach, combined with the robust feature set make Teamwork Live an increasingly sensible choice of Project Management Suite.

[note I also have also been given a free premium account on Teamwork Live]