By not setting up any categories or milestones by default, many potential customers assumed that Sifter simply didn’t offer them. Not everyone immediately digs into the settings to look for features. We needed a way to let people know that Sifter did offer categories and milestones, but if a team didn’t want to use them, it didn’t make sense to leave a permanent reminder taking up real estate.
So, instead of displaying a constant reminder in place of the category and milestone drop downs, we now only display the suggestion to create categories or milestones during the first 24 hours of a project’s life. That way, the reminder is there when it’s useful, but then it’s out of the way once the project is underway.
We always want to avoid weighing down the interface with clutter, but sometimes that leads to the unfortunate consequence of obscuring or hiding features. We’re always walking a fine line, but this was just one of those situations where a nice simple solution seemed to do the trick and work out great for all parties.