Design your way

If you keep the same workflow for a long time and you feel something is off, then something most certainly is. This is why once in a while you’ll need to revisit the way you work.

How? I’ll help you.

I’ll start by offering several time-tested design productivity tips for teams and individuals alike.

I’ve added a set of guiding principles that can help even the most complex projects stay on track.

Finally, I compiled a list of top web design apps. Premier products for use by design teams and individuals alike.

Productivity Tips Worth Following

Clarify Expectations with your clients or team. Designers need to know what is expected of them. Where their priorities lie, and what to do when manpower has to be redirected to take care of unanticipated problems. Show team members what’s expected of them, and get out of the way.

Encourage Open Communication. Team members can be reluctant to tell their project manager when they are falling behind.

Free, open, and constant communication with your client or team can prevent minor issues from becoming major ones.

Give Team Members Autonomy. Designers like to feel they’re in control of their projects. It’s the only way they can grow.

As an individual designer, make sure to ask your client for the autonomy you need.

Rethink Meetings. You can’t completely get rid of these time hogs, but you can make them run them efficiently. Briefing team members ahead of time on the topics to be discussed helps.

Establish boundaries with your clients and clear dates for your meetings. Don’t let them bug you five times a day.

Reserve downtime – Mandating occasional breaks improves both productivity and morale. Even in a hard-driving 24/7 work environment.

Principles to Remember

Make smart use of shared calendars with your client or team.
Hold direct reports accountable by showing the entire team’s progress.
Communicate when you expect teams to put in extra hours.
Don’t micromanage. Give your reports the resources needed to do the job.
Don’t overcommit your team.

As far as getting the real work done, any of these six web design apps should help your projects run smoothly. Give them a close look.

InVision

InVision is the world’s leading prototyping, collaboration, and workflow platform. It’s a window into everything that’s being designed for major companies like Twitter. InVision gives designers and design teams alike the opportunity to take feedback from clients, stakeholders, and team members, and organize place that feedback in a single, convenient place, or drill down into specifics.

Designers can modify their projects, test them, and if needed, modify them more. No coding is necessary when putting its design-driven project management tool through its paces.

Sign up for a free trial to see how InVision is capable of simplifying every aspect of workflow between design and development. Features include unlimited video and audio feedback, and live interaction with your web and mobile product designs.

InVision also gives you the capability to push and pull your total design activity into a single place. By signing up, you’ll understand why companies like Apple, General Motors, Uber, and others have come to rely on in their drive to create smarter, user-approved products.

Proto.io

Proto.io is an industry leading prototyping platform which gives designers, entrepreneurs, and developers the power to create pixel-perfect web and mobile app prototypes that look and feel just like the real app should.

It seamlessly covers the entire design process from early wireframes and mockups all the way to interactive, animated, high-fidelity prototypes. Simply use the Proto.io Editor to design your prototypes & experiment with thousands of UI components for iOS and Android.

You can give life to your prototype by creating beautiful interactions and animations and preview on any device using the Proto.io app for iOS and Android. And the best part? All this can be achieved without a single line of code.

350,000 users, Fortune 500 companies and smoking-hot startups are using Proto.io for their product design; and there’s a good reason for that. You can find out yourself with their 15-day full featured trial.

Sendloop

Sendloop is a great choice if your team is in need of the type of a powerful marketing tool that is all too often found only on enterprise-level software systems; and it is available at a fraction of the price. This web design app is especially tailored for leveraging the power of email marketing.

With Sendloop, you can send design content and offers that your regular and potential customers will love. Sendloop comes with 100+ ready to use email templates that await your branding. Coding is not required, nor is there a need to learn other complex technical skills.

Now you can you can distribute your marketing information using the same professional-looking emails that the big boys employ. With Sendloop, you can follow up leads and customers automatically, and increase your email response rate with tailored content that can be of magazine-style quality.

Paymo

Paymo is the perfect project management app for a small to medium business. Paymo allows individuals and teams to work with a single platform for their team collaboration, timesheet management, and project accounting needs.

This handy tool carries with it numerous benefits. By keeping your team in sync, you can hold fewer and shorter meetings.

You can also use real-time project management data to avoid having to make guestimates for new or current projects. With Paymo, you can track expenses, create invoices from timesheet data, and accept payments online.

MeisterTask

What do design teams look for most when choosing a project management tool? More than anything, they look for one that allows them to work together.

It’s that simple, and the MeisterTask solution is to offer an intuitive, multi-platform task management tool that, thanks to a beautifully designed UI, is an absolute joy to work with.

MeisterTask offers built-in time tracking, displays task-to-task relationships, and integrates smoothly with more than 500 other tools. If keeping everyone on the same page is a recurring problem, this task management tool is the solution.

Form Analytics by UseItBetter

If you sell online, you are likely losing a percentage of your customers because of the forms you use. This is common in the ecommerce world, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Form Analytics by UseItBetter enables you to analyze forms that were completed, or partially completed, and drill down to the problems you users might be encountering.

It is free to use for visits up to 1,000/month. And it works with multi-step forms and single-page apps.

Summing up

This article is based on a couple of premises. Number one – to be successful, designers and design teams are advised to follow certain productivity tips that address the need for good communications and giving designers freedom of action. Number two; these same teams and individuals should practice certain principles. These principles are intended to keep work flowing smoothly throughout a project.

What still can be lacking is having the right tools for the job. Here, we are recommending 6 web design apps. They range from all-in-one-apps to apps dedicated to special purposes.