Review: FCMobileLife Goals for iPhone and iPod Touch

Goal-setting with a “touch” of FranklinCovey magic.

FCMobileLIfe Goals for iPhone (version 1.1, $4.99) is a product of the SCO Group and FranklinCovey. After Tasks, it is the second FCMobileLife iPhone port. The original suite (also including Schedule, Team, and Post) runs on the Windows Mobile and BlackBerry platforms. That suite is subscription-only and starts at $29.95/year, so $4.99 for Goals as a permanent app is a relative bargain. Ostensibly, these apps recreate the FranklinCovey productivity methodology in a mobile web context.

Look and Feel

Goals presents a slick, black interface, with FranklinCovey’s distinctive compass logo visible in the background. While Tasks uses bold colors for prioritizing, the palette here is subdued: White text and white-and-blue progress bars. If a due date passes, the goal or step turns red (Esperanto for “Overdue” in productivity apps). The interface feels consistent with other iPhone apps--smooth, glassy-looking elements, swiping a finger to scroll lists, etc.

Functionality

In contrast to some goal-tracking iPhone applications (such as Touch Goals), Goals isn’t merely a progress or habit tracker. It focuses on the actions or sub-goals that move the user forward.

Users can name a goal, set due dates, add notes, attach photos or voice memos, categorize goals, and create intermediate steps. Intermediate steps have their own due dates and appear below (or can be collapsed back into) overall goals. Steps, sadly, cannot be categorized, nor can they be accessed elsewhere (no syncing with Outlook, web apps, or even Tasks). Steps and goals can be tracked either as a percentage (the default) or a numeric score (out of a target total). Annoyingly, while the app starts with 0% complete, after switching to a target score the minimum is 1 out of x.

The percent-completion of a goal is tied by default to completion of intermediate steps; if you have ten steps and complete one, the overall progress jumps 10%. Of course, if you goal is measured in pounds, dollars, or other external measures, step completions won’t correspond perfectly with goal completion. Luckily, manually changing the percent complete (or changing from percentage to numerical) decouples the completion score from the intermediate steps.

Goal-Setting Philosophy (or: “FranklinCoveyness”)

FranklinCovey’s day planners and time-management seminars include goal-setting content. The first space on their paper goal-tracking form is labeled “Value/Mission/Role (why?).” FranklinCovey teaches that tying goals to deeply-held values or relationships increases the likelihood of completion and the value of the results. The “Why?” question is so important that it appears before the goal itself on the form; it is therefore curious that it doesn’t appear at all in this app (though FranklinCovey diehards can always use the Notes feature for this purpose).

My Experience

In order to fairly review this application for Higher Process, I decided to use it to plan and track an actual goal. I chose my goals for establishing this site. (In the words of Merlin Mann, “The only way to make my work more recursive would require moving my desk into an Escher drawing. Over and over. While Philip Glass plays.”)

I entitled my goal “Establish Higher Process”; some of my intermediate steps are visible in the screenshot above. I managed to complete the goal a day early, despite several frustrating bugs and shortcomings I encountered:

• The app is crash-prone, crashing an average of once per day during my use.
• Closing a goal saves the state of that goal, but closing an intermediate step saves nothing (so creating several steps in a row is dangerous, given the crash rate). It is not intuitive that closing a goal saves but closing a step doesn’t.
• Scrolling is less smooth when there are more than twenty intermediate steps among all goals.
• When defining more than a four or five steps on a new goal, the application became sluggish.
• The Goals icon on the Home Screen does not rebadge with the number of due or overdue steps. The Tasks application does do this (at least, after it is opened).

Among all its features, I found the progress bars the most useful; if you try the app, I recommend frequently leaving it open to keep the scoreboard in view. For the last two weeks of my use, I opened the app right before going to bed. In the morning, when I first unlocked my phone, I saw a progress report on my goals (a great bit of motivation).

Conclusion

If you enjoy the style and functionality of FCMobileLife Tasks, Goals makes a fair companion even without integration. However, the crashing and unresponsiveness tried my patience. The look and feel, stability, and “FranklinCoveyness” of the methodology all need improvement. Overall, I do not recommend this edition, but it has potential; version 1.5 or 2.0 may become something special.

Monday, November 23, 2009