Design your way

Whether you’re a web designer, a project manager, or a small business owner, you naturally look for ways to do things better and/or faster.

Any increase in productivity can positively impact your bottom line. Whether it means more customers, happier clients, or increased sales and company growth.

To make productivity gains happen, you’ve learned to take advantage of certain tips and techniques (as you will see below). You also look for tools that will automate manage certain aspects of your work. This way you can work more efficiently, or free up time to work at what you do best.

The productivity apps described here are the best in their class for the functions they perform. Whether those functions involve prototype building, program management, time tracking, sales management, or team collaboration.

Active Collab

If your team is using separate software programs for task management, time tracking, and invoicing, and/or you are communicating and reporting status to clients via e-mail, consider trying Active Collab. This simple, yet powerful project management tool, allows these tasks to be performed from a single platform, and it will manage your team’s collaboration activities as well.

With its many integrations, Active Collab can accept input from multiple sources. You don’t constantly need to hand feed it data, nor does it place restrictions on the types of tools your team members use as sources of that data.

Like most browser applications, Active Collab runs on the cloud. There is nothing to install, nor is there any setup procedure involved. The only thing you have to do is subscribe.

Active Collab currently has a user base of over 200,000 designers and project managers who use it on a regular basis. You can try it for free for 30 days, which should allow you enough time to check out its features and pricing plans, and familiarize yourself with its functions.

Wake

Wake provides the fastest way to get your ideas, and your work, in front of your team. Capture and share anything that comes across your screen. With Wake, you can share without ever leaving Sketch, Photoshop or Illustrator; simply by using a handy keyboard shortcut.

For example, if you want to share sketches from your notebook, or a flow chart you’ve created on the whiteboard, you can use Wake’s iOS app to snap a photo and immediately send it off to your team. The iOS app also allows you to keep in touch with team members, your project’s status, and other happenings while you are out of the office.

Check out the Starter or Pro Custom plans, or try Wake for 30 days for free.

Proto.io

Building an awesome prototype is often the first step toward building an awesome product. That’s precisely what Proto.io lets you do. A prototype built using Proto.io can be used to preview and test web and mobile apps on real devices, or used to solicit feedback. It’s easy to see why the time invested in building a prototype (it’s typically not a lot), is time well spent.

You can use Proto.io’s superbly crafted iOS and Android components to design and build a prototype directly in the Proto.io editor, or you can import your own Photoshop or Sketch files. It’s not at all difficult to turn your static designs into interactive prototypes that feature stunning animations, commonly-used gestures, and touch and mouse events.

When you’ve completed a prototype, you can view it in your browser or a real device and share it with key stakeholders with just a single click.

Try Proto.io for 15 days for free!

MeisterTask

MeisterTask users like this agile task management app because of the way its flexible project boards can be adjusted to fit their workflows. They also like the way its customizable dashboard lets them see what’s happening, and what needs to happen, with minimal effort on their part.

Another feature they like, and you will as well, is how MeisterTask seamlessly integrates with Google Drive, GitHub, Zendesk, and many other popular apps.

Salesmate

Salesmate gives small companies the sales management, process automation, and business acceleration solution they look for to grow their business. This customer relationship management app makes it easy to assign and track deals, and sales team and individual progress.

Having an app like Salesmate that can give you a real-time view of your sales funnel will help you turn your team into a top selling troop.

Minterapp

Minterapp provides a great solution to a small business looking for a better way to track time and use the information to generate invoices or provide estimates to clients. Individuals can also use this app to learn more about their work habits, so they can be more efficient and productive.

For businesses, time tracked can automatically be converted to customized invoices, which can be delivered online to clients. Minterapp ties in with Mailchimp, PayPal, and Basecamp.

Productivity Tricks and Tips

Failing to plan is planning to fail. This sage bit of advice is worth paying attention to. Without a plan to follow, multiple tasks and deadlines can easily overwhelm you; and when you’re trying to play catchup all the time, it’s easy to make mistakes, or let things fall through the cracks. You find yourself worrying about providing a solution before a deadline hits; before you even understand the problem.

Having the right tools can be a definite help; but there are things you can do yourself to avoid stress and become more productive.

Use Keyboard Shortcuts.

When you can replace locating and clicking on a series of icons with a keyboard shortcut, you’ll accomplish the same task in less time; time that adds up if you perform the task regularly.

Why reach for the mouse or touchscreen, when you can accomplish what you want much more efficiently by keeping your hands on the keyboard? Small process improvements like this add up.

Standardize Naming Conventions and Assign Tags

Organizing your assets will be easier if you standardize your file names. Standardizing names, and color conventions, also makes things much easier for those you collaborate with. Think of search time as time wasted; unless you’re doing research.

Use Time Tracking

Tracking your time is an excellent way to find out more about yourself, specifically how you go about your daily work. If you tend to procrastinate, or if you are easily distracted (e.g., checking out the latest happenings on Facebook), time tracking will show you how much longer it is taking you to work a task than is necessary.

Time tracking also helps you organize your work, as well as provide more accurate estimates to bosses or clients. There are plenty of time tracking apps on the market, including an excellent one that is described here.

Customize Your Workspace for Speed

When we get a new app, we tend to keep using it just as it came out of the box; especially when it makes certain tasks easier or faster to perform. It is often possible however, to customize an app’s workspace to make it even faster to work with.

Customizing your workspace is similar in some respects to using keyboard shortcuts. When an app uses presets, its usually to help you to use it more easily. Shortcuts can often be simplified. You should find it worth your time to check out the possibilities.

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