When Amber Meant Two Things

On the dashboard, amber meant an episode was in prep.

Open that same episode, and amber meant it was in post-production.

Same color. Same app. Two different answers.

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Nobody filed a bug about it. That's the problem with this kind of thing. You don't notice it, you just feel a little less sure of what you're looking at.

And when you're running a show, that small doubt adds up. Is this one waiting on me, or on my editor? Did I already record it?

A color should answer that before you read a word.

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Yesterday I wrote about giving notifications one rule: one color, one meaning. Now the rest of the app follows it too.

Episode stages now follow one path on the dashboard and on each episode. Idea is gray. Prepare is amber. Record is purple. Produce is blue. Promote is violet. Ready is green. Published is PodGlue blue.

The pipeline on your dashboard and the status on your episode page now tell the same story. The Production Board is next in line to match.

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Priority got the same treatment.

We had two kinds of "high" hiding in the app. One meant urgent: a guest follow-up you shouldn't let slip. The other meant a good fit: a past guest worth inviting back. One was pink, the other was green.

Now they're two separate scales with their own words. Urgent runs red, amber, gray. Fit runs green, cyan, gray. You'll never see a red "strong fit" or a green "overdue".

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Here's what that looks like on a normal Tuesday.

You open the dashboard. Two episodes sit in amber. You know they're in prep, waiting on your questions.

You check your guest list. One past guest shows a green "high fit". Another follow-up shows red. You know which one to do first.

No legend needed.

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One more small thing on the website: the page titles got smaller. They were shouting a little. Now they just say what the page is about and let you read on.

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Next up are the parts of PodGlue we built most recently. The speaker submission pages for Summit and the Launch Engine planner were designed on their own, and you can tell. They're moving onto the same look as the rest of the app.

PodGlue is built to help you keep track of the people behind every episode. The screens should make that easier to see at a glance, not harder.