Toggle between pill and rounded rectangle shapes for field options

It appears some of my team are on a test rollout to replace the pill shape with a rounded rectangle shape for custom field options.

The rounded square shape is aesthetically unappealing and distracting.

It’s way too harsh and it’s making it quite difficult to focus on our lists.

Personally I’d like to have only the pill shape but if you are wanting to keep the rounded rectangle, could we have the option to toggle between the two and can we at least have left and right padding on it?

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@Elyse_Hendry - welcome to the forum! That’s currently an A/B test that Asana is running. I think the intent is to open up more space on the pill to clip less text for longer field options. It’s an active test (i.e., they’re gathering feedback and haven’t choses a future path yet) so hopefully they’ll take this post into account.

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I’ve noticed that all my status fields in Asana are now formatted in boxes. Is that something that I can manually change in Asana on my end to appear how it used to appear last week? I see from past posts, this was in the AI-Beta stage in April 2024, wondering if this is an Asana-wide change now or if I have the ability to revert it back to how it used to be.

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Hi @Melissa_McEwen1, welcome to our Community Forum. This is an ongoing A/B test and we don’t have an ETA for conclusion yet. There’s an existing feedback thread on this topic, and I’ll be merging your post with that discussion so you can follow any updates there. :slight_smile:

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I highly agree. Ideally it’d just be the pill shape.

Tho we understand that it’s likely a helpful backend change in terms of performance, visually, the pills are much better and make the view very appealing. The rounded rectangles look awkward and I speak on the behalf of my entire team. We’d definitely prefere the pill version.

If truly necessary, a toggle would be very nice.

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I find the new square shape for the enum / dropdown options somewhat distracting. Especially the padding makes it a lot harder to read than it was before in my opinion.

I’ve also only heard negative feedback from my team members about it.

A toggle to change between versions would add quite a bit of complexity and would it make it harder going forward to test for both style versions I assume.
Ideally I would like to see it being reverted back to how it was.


Perhaps on the positive side, the new square shape for @ mentioning names in comments seems fine to me, although I still think the round ones were more visually pleasing there too.

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Definitely do not prefer the new shape, please keep the previous pill shaped version, thanks!

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Some of our team is also seeing the rounded square chips and agree with the others here - they don’t flow well visually, and it’s harder to read the text due to varied margins on the sides vs the top of the shape. We strongly prefer the pill shape!

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Our team members who have received this test/update are complaining that the look is making things harder to see and work around. I personally still have the pill shapes but have already heard many complaints from others regarding the rectangles.

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I like the pill shape much better, please bring it back or rather keep it).

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Has anyone else noticed the recent style update to tags, mentions, drop-downs, etc. (less rounded corners)? Is this really the most important thing on the Asana to-do list right now - changing how the style looks? These changes also roll out without notice. Just refresh your page and one day, boom, it’s there. The blocky look doesn’t really look great in practice. I imagine there must be some things that users are requesting that are more important than changing such styles.

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Hi @Richard_Parke,

FYI I merged your post with an existing thread on this topic. (Note you can vote at the top of the thread!)

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@Elyse_Hendry Agreed that options are always best - users like options. It always amazes me how often we see development changes without options. I can’t imagine there is anything performance-based behind this. But would love to learn more about how that is possible if it is the case. The text isn’t even centered within the container. It’s just sloppy and yes, too bold and in your face!

@Phil_Seeman how many votes does it take for Asana to actually consider changing something back? And I wonder how much time would be saved in development if they asked users before making such changes. I also wonder how many people actually like the change. It could be that only 30 people (current vote) frequent the forums and many people don’t think it will matter to vote.

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Totally agree, I’m lucky to still have the pill shaped field options, a lot of my team have been switch though.

It looks cluttered, distracting and hardly legible… not sure why Asana would force this upon paying customers without an option to opt out. It reminds me a little of the Activision dev’s who refused to admit they had built an awful game, instead of listening to their playerbase they pushed ahead with what they thought was correct - 101 on how to destroy your business income.

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Hi @Richard_Parke,

Forum votes are just one of a number of factors that Asana uses for feature decisions, so there’s not a particular numeric value tipping point. For some more context on this, see the first question here: 🦄 If Wishes Were Unicorns: Why Asana Might Not Have Implemented that Feature Request (and other thoughts about Asana feature development and product strategy)

Well, not necessarily always - I do typically like them in moderation but see the 4th question in that post for some additional considerations re. options.

FWIW, the rounded pills led to text being truncated; as I understand it, a lot of the purpose of the new design is to help reduce the truncation. Not defending it or attacking it, just explaining for those who are puzzled about it.

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Here’s a “before and after” comparison illustrating how the new UI shows more of a custom field’s value:

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Without any notice from Asana, they switched my view to the rectangles today. I have been contacting support and wasting time trying to figure how to change back. I can’t stand looking at these rectangles! I will be switching over to Microsoft Planner if this is not corrected soon. :rage:

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Hi @Daniel_Vela,

We’ve gotten confirmation from Asana that this test of the new design has gone through and been accepted, so that means this new UI is now a part of the product, and it won’t be possible to change back.

If you have to switch to Planner, now would probably be the time. I would think there would be more significant differences to consider between the two products than this one, but of course UI is a very personal thing!

I am genuinely curious: your entire adoption of Asana is at risk because of this UI change? Or was it simply the change that pushed you over the edge?

I preferred the rounded pill style over the big boxy rectangles for everything. Perhaps part of the issue is the tag name font size is way too big now. The tag name shouldn’t be bigger than the font of the due date. It distracts focus to all the wrong elements.

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