8 Popular Productivity Apps For Designers in 2018

Are you spending lots of time juggling meetings, project deadlines, and the like? If yes, then eventually you’ll begin to feel that your working life is not supposed to be like that.
This can be true for both teams and enterprising freelancers. They devote a significant amount of time trying to stay organized. As a result, they spend less time on their design activities.
Normally, you spend time on project management tasks that must get done. Yet, sometimes you spend time on tasks that in truth aren’t worthy of your time. It can be difficult to tell the difference between the two.

In any event, staying on track is often one of the more challenging tasks you face on most days. If you’re a freelancer, the freedom you sought by choosing that route can also lead to your downfall.
Fortunately, there are plenty of productivity apps that help you stay focused. They will keep you organized and under control.
Here are 8 tools I’m recommending:

1. monday.com

monday.com can be used by a project team of any size, whether it’s a pair of freelancers needing to collaborate on a single project, or hundreds or thousands of individuals are involved in the outcome of multiple projects. This team management tool is also suitable for use in any industry sector. Initially marketed mainly to tech companies and startups, its capabilities were quickly discovered by non-tech entities. monday.com, originallymarketed under the dapulse brand name, is used by 22,000+ teams representing roughly 200 verticals, 70% of which fall outside the tech sector.
There are multiple reasons why these users have taken to Monday.com, one of which is its “cheetah fast” speed (a recent upgrade from “cat quick”).
Even more important perhaps, is monday.com’s customizability. This project management tool can easily be customized to manage your workflow. You won’t have to change your design process to match the tool.
The color visuals are another reason. Team members can easily see what’s happening, what has happened, and the present status of specific tasks or of the entire project.

2. Taiga

Project managers strive not only to keep their projects under control, but to keep them under full control. And, that’s precisely what Taiga enables them to do. This project management platform (created to meet the needs of Scrum and Agile designers and developers) is Open Source, it’s simple and intuitive to use, and it’s free for up to three members. Every project has its own peculiarities, a factor that not every project management tool or platform can deal with. Since Taiga is customizable, it can easily be attuned to fit each project’s personality. You can apply the tool’s Kanban methodology to divide a project into whichever stages you prefer. You can also apply Taiga’s Epicsfeature to help you plan strategically across multiple projects, manage those projects, and manage the relationships between them.
Premium and Enterprise plans are also available, as is the Taiga app, which provides a better way to work mobile.

3. Mason

Mason is a productivity tool with something of a twist. It combines the elements of web building and collaboration in a way that allows teams to collaborate on actual software elements, rather than being constrained to working with mockups or prototypes. The ability of teams to work on individual web and mobile software elements can markedly increase team productivity. Mason is a radical approach to web design in that it assembles digital products by breaking them down into “atomic” patterns, and then reassembling them using a building block approach. Although this tool can be applied anywhere in the design phase, it is especially helpful in the latter phases when specific elements of the design need to be changed or refined.
Designing and testing is free. You will only be charged a fee for using Mason when your web customers view the final products.

4. ActiveCollab

Increased productivity can often be achieved by keeping organized project information in one place for everyone to see. With ActiveCollab, you can avoid most of the problems associated with telephone or email communications. You will avoid situations where team players are unintentionally kept out of the loop, and ideas, comments, and feedback are lost in the shuffle. ActiveCollab keeps information centralized and enables you to achieve meaningful collaboration across the entire team.

5. RunYourMeeting

Productivity gains resulting from doing things more efficiently are sometimes undercut by wasting time. Meetings are often guilty of this, even under the best of circumstances. When one or more of the participants comes unprepared, the time wasted or lostcan involve every attendee. RunYourMeeting will help you get done what you want to get done. This productivity tool helps you plan, conduct, and follow up on meetings and action items, and share vital information.

6. ClickTime

Project managers usually need to know more than the present status of a project. To meet their responsibilities, they need to know who is doing what, who is available for work if needed, the hours remaining on a task, and more.
ClickTime not only provides this information, but presents it in concise, easy-to-understand graphic displays. ClickTime helps PMs manage costs and expenses, and employee time off as well.

7. Nutcache

This productivity tool is designed with the project managers’ and creative teams’ needs in mind. Nutcache will be especially helpful for creative teams, making the working process a breeze. Moreover, this business-oriented productivity app will manage any Agile project types from start to finish. This includes the initial estimate, project budgeting, time tracking, expense management and final billing.

8. Futuramo Visual Tickets

Designers will benefit from using Futuramo Visual Tickets, a web app that helps teams exchange tickets with bugs, change requests, and feedback in the most visual way possible — through annotated screens. Moreover, teams can share files and exchange comments, prioritize work on tickets, change status, filter key information, and more. Try it free.

Conclusion

There are many ways technology is being applied to make work easier. These productivity apps are no different. It can be anything – a collaboration, a project management, or design aids. Once tasks are easier to do, productivity increases.
You shouldn’t have any problem locating a tool that will fit you. Each of the tools presented can make the majority of your project tasks easier to accomplish. (Via hongkiat)