The Six Best Productivity Apps for Designers Sponsored
We seem to be surrounded by those who are obsessed with productivity. We want to or are pressured to do better and do more in less time.
We’re told that efficient work habits can eventually spill over into our daily living. This can allow us to harmoniously blend together work, fun, and family. There’s an element of truth to that.
Our message focuses more on ways you can be more efficient, and more effective in your daily work.
Tech advances can be both a blessing and a curse. While technology can help us do tasks better and more quickly it can also give us more tasks to do. Smartphone productivity apps can, for example, be used to manage our scheduling. You can organize our tasks, and access information on the spot.
Invest in a few of the tools we’ve selected here and follow our productivity tips. You’ll discover improving your productivity can become habit forming.
Mason
Mason isn’t your typical web design tool in that it allows you to consolidate steps in the design/build/deploy process that you probably thought could never be skipped.
Mason is a front-end feature building platform for product teams, where you can create, design and build functional digital and software features for websites, apps, and nearly any other digital product. Your final design, which you can view in the builder, is inserted into your product with a *single line of code*– skipping a need for prototyping, documentation, and QA inspection, and minimizing any need for expensive developer resources.
Mason also helps you save post-deployment time and money. It’s not only developers that can quickly make changes to their front-end experiences. Any authorized person, including website and business owners, designers, copywriters,a nd more can make changes to an active software application if they have a Mason account; shortening the deployment cycle, and reducing downtime to minutes.
If you’ve been looking for a UI/UX tool that’s fast, reliable, gives you precise results and is a time and money saver give Mason a look. You can start free today.
Proto.io
Proto.io is designed to satisfy all your prototyping needs along both the early and later stages of the design process. During the early stages you can use this intuitive tool for wireframing and for building low-fidelity prototypes to test your concepts and receive feedback.
Proto.io will also serve you well later in the design process with its ability to produce high-fidelity prototypes for user testing and design approval and signoff.
The Proto.io Editor does all the heavy lifting when you’re building a prototype, and the Player feature lets you view the results on your browser, share design information with others, and conduct user testing. Lastly, its Dashboard feature helps you manage your users and projects.
With this prototyping tool in hand you can build high-fidelity prototypes that give you the exact experience, look and feel you expect the final product to exhibit on a desktop or mobile device.
monday.com
The monday.com team management tool provides a centralized platform on which project leaders and teams can manage every aspect and detail of their work, from high-level planning to details of day-to-day tasks.
To effectively help teams make changes to increase productivity, the team members have to love the tools they’re expected to use, and more than 50,000 teams around the globe love what monday.com does for them.
monday.com shows who’s in charge of what, tracks time, promotes transparency, improves communication and collaboration, and since it can be seamlessly used on your computer or your phone, location is never a problem.
monday.com’s operation is simple but not simplistic and it is so easy to work with it’s become extremely popular with non-tech teams looking for a substitute to replace whiteboard presentations and excessively lengthy meetings.
In short, this project management tool offers an easy way to centralize and streamline your workplace flows and processes.
Active Collab
ActiveCollab is project management software designed for creative professionals and it lets you organize your entire work and deliver exceptional service to all your clients.
The new ActiveCollab features a completely redesigned interface, and a slew of visual and technical improvements, including a task rescheduling system that automatically manages task dependencies (e.g., parent and child tasks). There are also multiple task views that enable you to see project status at a glance.
Nutcache
Nutcache offers an excellent solution for team collaboration issues. Enhanced collaboration generally leads to improvements in overall project performance. This productivity tool will also help project leaders streamline workflows in ways that ensure tasks are completed on time and within budget.
This all-in-one project management software tool is ideal for design teams and project managers that subscribe to Agile principles and practices.
Lucidchart.com
Lucidchart’s use of visualization techniques helps its user do a better job of communicating, especially with complex ideas or subjects. An example would be explaining technical flows and processes to non-tech speaking clients.
Visualizing workflows and processes also helps you better organize ideas and goals; more effectively than lengthy textual material can ever do. Lucidchart is easy to use and features a custom shape library to help create outlines and diagrams.
5 Productivity Tips to Achieve More & Create Peace of Mind
- Write it down
If it’s important, write it down. If you’re not sure of its importance, write it down. This applies to every commitment and every task you make. Doing so will free your mind from uncertainties associated with trying to remember. - Do the Dreaded Stuff First
Almost everyone has a tendency to put off a dreaded task as long as possible. This can come back to bite you when it’s a high-priority task. The good news is that when you tackle a task you dread or fear head-on, you’ll usually feel pretty good. - Take Breaks
According to the experts, taking a break about every 45 minutes is about optimum. That’s about the time you start to lose focus, and the law of diminishing returns begins to set it. Find an interval you’re comfortable with and try to make a habit of following it. - Get Some Exercise
Think “sound mind, sound body”. The two tend to go together. Exercise makes you healthier and keeps you that way. - Learn to Say No
Trying to please everyone or feeling a need to take on every assignment can lead to work overload. This is equal to the loss of control and productivity.
Conclusion
There’s a host of different things you can try to boost your productivity. But if you’re trying too many, you’ll reach the point of diminishing returns. You could actually find yourself or your team is becoming less productive.
Keep things simple with one or more of these top productivity tools. Make the productivity tips we’ve shared with you a habit. You’ll be amazed at how much more you can actually accomplish in a given amount of time.
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