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8 Freelance Project Management Apps for 2021+

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In my experience, the biggest challenge that freelancers face — more than winning clients or setting prices — is project management; take on too much work, and you’ll start missing deadlines, take on too little, and you’ll start missing your rent.

Some people are naturally organized; they rock up at their desk at 08:59, fully confident in what they will spend the next 8–12 hours working on. Let’s be kind and say that I am not one of them, and leave it at that. The only way I have managed to survive the industry is by self-consciously micro-managing my schedule on a daily basis.

When I worked in an agency, I knew what I would be working on days in advance. Now, I know 90% of what I’ll be working on, weeks in advance.

That level of organization requires very, very, very careful planning. I hold team meetings at the end of the day, yes, “team” meetings of one person. To do that I use a number of tools that suit me.

How to Choose a Project Management App

The most important aspect of any project is the end. That’s when the client will assess your work, and that’s when you get paid. So when you choose a project management solution, make sure it gives you a clear path to the project conclusion.

I know one freelancer who sets himself a hard stop at 7 pm every day. At 7 pm, he downs tools switches off, and walks away. I once heard him end a client call at 7 pm because he’d reached his cut-off point. It made me wince — I would have stayed on until the call concluded — but it hasn’t affected his business.

I know another successful freelancer who works on a budget. When she has earned the money she needs for that day, she stops. She bills by the hour to make this work, so when she sits down in the morning, she knows exactly what time she’ll finish.

Personally, I prefer a task-based approach. I know what I have to get done; if I can get ahead, then great, but my main focus is ensuring I don’t fall behind. I believe that if you hit your deadlines, everything else will take care of itself. Admittedly, there have been a few late-nights (and all-nights) over the years, but thankfully they’re less common these days.

No one style of project management suits everyone. And it doesn’t matter what approach you take, provided you take an approach.

8 Best Project Management Apps for Freelancers

As a freelancer, the most important thing characteristic you can have is reliability. Cultivate a reputation for delivering on your promises, and you’ll become invaluable to your clients. The best project management app is the one that helps you keep your promises.

There are some excellent tools on the market that facilitate project management, but most are aimed at SMEs, or project managers running a team of freelancers.

The tools here are listed from least, to most useful for the average freelancer. I’ve avoided too many time-tracking apps because I find these tend to encourage billing by the hour, which is potentially damaging to your business long term. If you do need pure time-tracking, check out Harvest. I’ve also avoided solutions that are too large-scale to benefit freelancers. If you’re looking for a project management tool for teams, then Basecamp, Jira, Project.co, and Redbooth are all worth considering.

Sadly none of these apps are perfect, and there’s a good chance you’ll need to use two or three to manage your projects.

8. Todoist

Todoist is hands down the best to-do app on the market. The downside is that its feature set is minimal.

Todoist really excels at lists. You can break down tasks into sub-tasks, and sub-sub-tasks. The downside is there’s no real scheduling or comparison of multiple projects in a single view.

The mobile apps are great, and Todoist recently introduced boards, a form of kanban board that gives you a good overview of everything. If it introduces a gantt chart, I can see myself relying on it more.

Todoist has a free forever plan that is fine for most freelancers, and the paid plans start at just $3 per month.

7. Bonsai

Bonsai is an excellent service for freelancers that grew from a simple invoicing app to include proposals, contracts, time-tracking, and more.

I used Bonsai for invoicing for a couple of years, and it does everything it claims to do. However, there are a couple of significant areas where it falls down. Firstly, its invoicing is super-aggressive and cannot be customized — make sure you’re on friendly terms with any client you send a Bonsai invoice to. Secondly, while it does a good job of tracking what you have done, it doesn’t help you plan what needs to be done beyond a formal proposal.

If you’re running a few simple projects, then it’s possible Bonsai is right for you. Pricing starts at $19 per month.

6. Monday

Monday is one of the biggest players in the project management market. It offers a dizzying array of options, and if this list were aimed at project management for agencies, Monday would be further along our countdown. Monday may suit freelancers, particularly those who have migrated from agency work, but for most, it’s more than we need.

There is a free-forever plan that covers almost everything you could want. However, if you need to view your projects as a gantt chart — and I strongly suggest you do — then you’ll need to update to the standard plan, which starts at $8 per user per month, with a minimum of three seats, meaning at least $24 per month when billed annually.

5. AND.CO

AND.CO stands out as a slick, easy-to-use option for managing a freelance business. Like Bonsai, it allows you to manage proposals, invoicing, time-tracking, expenses, and more.

AND.CO also has extremely well-liked customer support. An underestimated consideration when you don’t have your own accounts team to resolve problems.

As with other solutions of this type, the task-management is lacking. It does include a simple to-do list, but in my opinion, it’s not sufficient, and you’ll need to supplement it with something that supports gantt charts.

There’s a free forever plan, but it’s barely more than a free trial. Pricing for full-featured access starts at $18 per month when billed annually.

4. ClickUp

ClickUp is a SaaS that aims to replace just about everything else you could need. Unlike some options on this list, it includes a CRM, which is a bonus because there’s nothing worse than relying on the search function in your email to track down someone’s contact details.

ClickUp also offers a genuinely free-forever account with enough features to make it usable. If you choose to upgrade to a paid plan, it’s just $5 per user per month, which is excellent value.

If anything, there’s just too much in here. If you’re someone who considers themselves a power-user who enjoys digging into every nuance of a UI, then ClickUp could be for you. But, if, like me, you favor a simple tool that does what it’s told and gets out of the way, then there are better options.

3. Asana

Asana is probably the best-known project management tool on the market. It offers a tremendous number of options and is flexible enough for any style of project management.

There’s a free forever plan that is ideal for getting started and offers you most — you may be sensing a theme here — of the features you’ll need. But Asana’s best feature is its excellent timeline implementation of the gantt chart, for which you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan costing $10.99 per user per month, with a minimum number of 2 seats that translates to a rather expensive $21.98 per month.

2. Trello

Trello is famous for its kanban boards, and many people prefer them to gantt charts, which has helped the app grow rapidly in the last few years.

If you’re prepared to pay $10 per user per month, Trello actually offers gantt charts as well, in the form of its timeline feature.

Trello is mainly designed for teams, not freelancers. However, if you do have the budget for a premium plan, Trello gives you an enviable ability to switch project management styles on a whim.

1. Toggl

Toggl is perhaps the perfect balance of time-tracking and gantt chart that is ideal for freelance projects.

As with most tools, Toggl is designed for teams, with billing starting at $8 per user per month. However, it offers a solo plan, designed for freelancers, that is free forever.

The main thing you miss out on with Toggl’s Solo plan is team timelines, which you won’t need unless you’re outsourcing work. One other obvious omission is unlimited planning boards, which you may find yourself paying for sooner or later.

But for a mixture of simplicity and powerful features available for $0, Toggl is hard to beat.

 

Featured image via Pexels

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Top 10 Most Suitable Alternatives to nTask

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Since its inception, nTask has shown its efficiency with various advanced features, frequent upgrades, inexpensive pricing, and much more. While we do enjoy the software, we are also aware that sometimes nTask might not be the right tool for your project or you might just want to take a look at its alternatives. Since we know our tool best, we have identified the top 10 nTask alternatives that compare well with the tool.

In this post, we will give you a rundown of the most suitable nTask alternatives along with a brief intro, key features, and pricing details. Without further ado, let’s dive straight in! 

Source de l’article sur DZONE

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Build Your Site The Easy Way With TagDiv Newspaper

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Ready to take your business online but not sure where to start? It’s a surprisingly simple process, made all the easier by the tagDiv Newspaper theme that can shoulder the burden of code, leaving you to be creative.

Professional web designers normally begin with broad brushstrokes, roughly hewing a site, before finessing on the finer details; that’s exactly what tagDiv’s Newspaper theme lets you do, with innovative tools and a huge selection of pre-built options to choose from.

What is the Newspaper Theme?

Newspaper is the best-selling magazine theme from tagDiv. In constant development over the last twelve years, it’s been used to create world-beating sites for clients as diverse and demanding as United Nations, ShareAmerica, The Rackspace Blog, Bitcoin News, Uber Engineering, and Tech Explorist.

As the name implies, the Newspaper theme is primarily a magazine or blog theme, but you can use it for any kind of site, in any type of industry.

Packed with intuitive features that make personal web development not just possible but enjoyable, it will have your site ready to launch in no time.

It is fully compatible with Gutenberg, WordPress’ drag-n-drop site builder; it also comes with its own WYSIWYG, tagDiv Composer. All the sites built in Newspaper are fully flexible, responsive, mobile-friendly, and retina-ready. Newspaper is even fully integrated with WooCommerce so that you can transform your magazine site into a fully-featured ecommerce store.

Newspaper has been carefully coded to make the most of the upcoming Core Web Vitals update from Google, so your new site will be well-placed to rank highly on search engines.

Now that you know a little about the background of the Newspaper theme let’s look at how we can use it to build a WordPress site.

Pre-Built Websites

Sometimes it’s not just your coding skills but your design skills that are lacking; you know what kind of site that you want, you’re just hazy on the details.

This is where tagDiv’s Newspaper theme comes into its own. With a single click, you can install an entire pre-built website. And the process is so fast and convenient that you can try out as many as you like and pick the one that matches your vision.

You can even import a whole ton of pre-written content for testing the sites out, so you can see how it will look with your content without spending hours typing or copying and pasting text out of a Word doc.

There are 120 different designs covering all kinds of different industries. This means no matter what kind of site you’re building, one click, and you’re ready to go live.

Cloud Library

One step up from a full pre-built website is tagDiv’s Cloud Library. If you’ve installed one of the pre-built websites, this is probably where you want to go next.

The Cloud Library is a collection of 1600 different design elements that can be mixed and matched with live-editing to fast-track your site creation. You’ll find content blocks like headers, footers, testimonials, banners, and featured items. You can mix-n-match them however you please to create the site of your dreams.

Putting the “Cloud” into the Cloud Library are tagDiv’s servers, storing the code for each of these elements, so your installation only needs to load the code you actually use. This provides a huge boost in performance.

Composer

Lastly, the Newspaper theme provides tagDiv Composer, a specialist WordPress builder — like Gutenberg — that allows you to customize your website with absolutely no coding skills whatsoever. It’s a powerful yet simple-to-use tool that allows you to edit the elements of the Cloud Library and adapt them to your own purposes.

With Composer, you can create your own headers, footers, banners, text blocks, and more without any of the limitations of cookie-cutter design.

tagDiv Composer gives you the ultimate control over your site. You’ll find all the essential elements you need, from text and buttons to images and videos. All you have to do is drag and drop them into place.

Building a Site With tagDiv Newspaper Theme

As you can see that the fastest way to an engaging and original website is, to begin with, a pre-built site, then add the different blocks of code you want from the Cloud Library, and finally customize them with the Composer.

To make this possible, tagDiv has brought together experts from multiple disciplines, including brand strategy, project management, and web development.

It’s a slick system for quickly publishing high-quality sites that are unique to you and your business. Trusted by more than 130,000 customers worldwide, the Newspaper has earned tagDiv the status of Power Elite Author on ThemeForest and Top Author on Envato.

The Newspaper theme costs just $59, which includes six months of support from tagDiv, but for just $17.63, you can extend support to 12 months for added peace of mind.

tagDiv Newspaper is the simplest way for you to take your business online using WordPress.

 

[— This is a sponsored post on behalf of tagDiv —]

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Collaborative Task Management with Taskade

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Productivity is a crowded space, with countless apps and services promising to make your life and business easier and more profitable. Of all the apps that make that promise, very few deliver, but we’ve found one that does: Taskade.

Flexible Planning With Taskade

Every problem is unique, and part of what defines us as creative professionals is the different ways we approach problems. What suits one person in one situation doesn’t suit another in another. This is where many planning apps fall down: they adopt one singular approach and expect users to fit around the app.

Taskade is different. Like the love-child of Trello, Notion, and Slack, Taskade uses a template approach to create a flexible planning system that you can use in whatever way you prefer.

When you open up Taskade, you’ll see some quick options: ‘blank,’ ‘weekly planner,’ ‘meeting agenda,’ and so forth. But there’s also a ‘more’ option that will give you access to the hundreds of templates Taskade supplies. There are dozens of template categories, and each category contains multiple templates that you can use to drive your planning process.

Whether you’re looking for a task list for launching on Product Hunt, a design system checklist, or a project scrum board, you’ll find the template ready and waiting for you.

If none of the predesigned options are right for the task at hand, Taskade gives you the option to create your own template from the basic building blocks of boards, actions, mind maps, charts, and lists.

Team Collaboration With Taskade

One of Taskade’s main strengths is its ability to work equally well for individuals and teams.

It makes sense when you’re evaluating a product that you do it on your own. But we encourage you to bring team members on board early in the trial because it’s when working with teams that Taskade really excels as a collaborative tool.

Once you’ve created a new planning project, you can invite your team, either by email or — if they’re already registered — by tagging them with their Taskade username.

You can assign tasks to individuals or multiple individuals (a much better option than the free-for-all you find in some to-do apps). You can also set deadlines for tasks so that everyone knows what the schedule is.

Team Chat on Taskade

Another area that Taskade excels for teams is the built-in real-time live chat. You can communicate with team members right in the project instead of jumping onto Slack or email.

For teams working remotely, or even just multi-tasking throughout the day, it’s a great way of ensuring that everyone has the information they need. As a result, mistakes are minimized, and best of all, there’s a written record that can be referred back to at any time.

Chat can be sent to the whole team, or direct messaged to an individual, so you don’t need to worry about filling up everyone’s notifications with messages that don’t apply to them.

Project Management With Taskade

If you’re working on a single project, then you probably know exactly where it is at all times. But for anyone working on multiple projects, it can be hard to keep track of everything. So Taskade has several different options for project managers.

The Mindmap section is one of the most useful parts of Taskade because it gives you a complete overview of everything in your project. You can see what has been completed and how much time it took — that way, you can assess how viable the timeline for your other tasks is.

Another great feature of Taskade is the activity feed. When one of your team makes a change to a project, it will pop up in your activity feed, and the next time you log in, you’ll see the status of your projects with a single glance.

Multi-Platform

One of our favorite aspects of Taskade is that it works equally well across different platforms. As well as the desktop web app, you’ll also find native apps in the iOS app store and the Android play store.

Syncing your account over different apps is awesome because ideas often occur at inconvenient times — on your commute, walking the dog. Even when you’re at your desk, it’s much handier to grab your phone and make notes than it is to switch to your browser and visit a site.

Easy Registration

If you’re feeling the pressure of a bulging inbox, or to-do lists on multiple post-its, then the last thing you need is another complex, confusing task to add to the pile.

Taskade is super-easy to get started with. Just click the ‘Sign up’ link in the top right of the site, and you’ll have three options: Sign up with Google, sign up with your email, or you can continue as a guest.

If you’re not sold yet, then continue as a guest — essentially a free trial — you can sign in properly later once your curiosity is satisfied.

Free to Use

Taskade is free to use on a limited basis. The free plan comes with 500Mb of storage and a maximum 25Mb file size. You can create individual tasks or whole projects, workflows, and custom templates and share tasks and projects with your team. That’s enough to help you make the most of Taskade for $0.

If you find that the generous free plan isn’t quite enough, paid plans start at just $5 per month. The paid plan gives you unlimited storage and bumps the maximum file size up to 250Mb. You have the same core features as the free plan; it’s just that they’re unlimited, which means you can do even more planning. In addition, the paid plan adds some handy extra features that are great time-savers, such as sorting tasks, creating repeat tasks, and bulk assigning tasks. Just look at how Taskade compares to similar tools.

Most professionals will get along with the free plan just fine, but $5 per month for unlimited storage is a great deal. On top of that, you have future premium features to look forward to, including a project revision history and a calendar view.

You can sign up to Taskade for free now, as a guest, with your email, or with Google.

 

[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of Taskade –]

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Estimating Projects: What You Need to Know

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Estimating projects is part and parcel of project management for any project. However, estimating projects with accuracy is not always so successful.

In fact, many of the issues in project management can be traced back to failed attempts at estimating projects. Whether that be projects that run over time or budget, are short in resources, or a load of other issues.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

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Feature Flag, What? Why? How?

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Velocity in agile development measures the quantity of work a team can accomplish in a sprint. It can be measured in story points, hours or days. The higher the velocity of a team, the more features it delivers, the more value it brings to customers. Sprint velocity is a good measure in sprint project management to evaluate and estimate team productivity.

The measure of the velocity is based on multiple factors: the continuous integration (CI) process, the time to qualify the code changes, to test the regression, the security, the delivery, etc…

Source de l’article sur DZONE

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Definition of Done: Best Practice to Succeed in Software Projects

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Dear editor, I would like to suspend publishing this my article for 3 weeks as it has a dependency on my article on another resource. Thank you for the understanding.

How do we know when a user story is « done? » Can we say that the user story is done when it is coded and all acceptance tests for it are passed? Business representatives may say yes, but they do not know all the peculiarities of software development. So, such criteria as quality are not fully visible to them. 

Source de l’article sur DZONE

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Poll: Is Basecamp Right To Shutdown Politics At Work?

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This week, in a move like something from a particularly eventful episode of The Office, popular project management app company Basecamp banned political and societal discussion in the company’s internal communications.

In a post that has been revised for “clarification,” the company’s co-founder Jason Fried listed six rules for employees: No societal or political discussions at work; No more ‘paternalistic’ benefits; No more committees; No more lingering on past decisions; No more 360 reviews; No forgetting what we do here.

A follow-up post from Heinemeier Hansson notes that Basecamp will still permit discussion of issues deemed central to its business like anti-trust and privacy; certain civil liberties are to be championed, while others, like racism and climate change, are not.

On the surface, it seems reasonable, Fried and co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson would like you to believe that it is. After all, people are paid to work, not soapbox, right?

So why, if they’re the ones being protected, are Basecamp’s employees angry about the move?

It turns out, multiple sources from inside Basecamp are reporting that the ‘political’ and ‘societal’ issues referred to in Fried’s public memo were, in fact, frank and open conversations about Basecamp itself.

As reported by The Verge, way back in 2009, a list of ‘funny’ customer names began circulating at the company — hardly respectful, potentially racist, and certainly inappropriate. The misalignment between co-founders and staff occurred when staff members attempted to hold discrete conversations about this and numerous other diversity and inclusivity failings at the company. Fried’s move appears to be a direct attempt to halt criticism of the status quo at Basecamp.

Basecamp itself is a highly political organization: The co-founders have written several books advocating certain societal change; they even provided a campaign headquarters and substantial donation for a candidate for Chicago mayor. Both co-founders are highly active on social media, using their business positions to elevate their personal views.

The truth is that the solo entrepreneur is an almost mythical beast. Successful startups require contributions from a range of skills and experience beyond any one individual. Jason Fried may be the frontman, strutting up and down the stage in spandex pants, with David Heinemeier Hansson playing lead guitar with his teeth, but behind them, there’s a drummer keeping time, and behind them all, there’s a crew of roadies without whom none of the equipment will arrive, let alone sound good.

Basecamp’s founders argue that the company has a mission, and that mission is to create apps that streamline the workplace. But how can you develop a product that is inclusive if staff cannot discuss what inclusive means? The answer is, you can’t.

Discussing racial bias in advertising or the impact of company wastage, climate change, or gender pay gaps in HR meetings are all political and societal and lead to a healthier, more united company.

As designers, we often say that you cannot not communicate; every decision is a design decision; there is no such thing as “adesign.” Likewise, choosing to be apolitical is itself a political choice. The only way it is feasible to run a company like this is to treat employees like robots (in the word’s original sense).

If employees feel the need to discuss exclusionary policies in the workplace, do the company founders, who benefit from those policies (or they would not be in place), have a moral or legal right to restrict those discussions?

Although it is the first point in Fried’s list that has drawn most ire, it is the fourth item on the list that is most telling: “No more lingering or dwelling on past decisions.” Like a parent answering, “Because I said so,” Fried’s attitude to his staff is laid bare in one statement.

It turns out two wealthy white men would rather their employees not try to change the world or even their workplace.

When Coinbase announced a similar move last year, it lost 5% of its staff. If Basecamp suffered the same loss, it would amount to three people. Hardly a disaster. The question for the founders — who, judging by the number of follow-ups and clarifications they’ve published, are aware the ice they’re on is perilously thin — is whether this kind of controversy creates irreparable reputational damage.

 

Featured image via Pexels.

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How Scrum Helps Developers Build Technical Skills and Flexible Architecture

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Developers who tried to build at least one product for an end-user know how many things are essential in a product: thoughtful UX, friendly UI, good performance and stability, security and data consistency, logging and maintenance, etc.
Multiply this to the number of platforms that you have to support. Add marketings and licensing, client support and bug reports, new feature requests, and competitive product pressure.

It’s hard to track everything in one head, and it is even harder to be perfect at every job. That’s why we work in teams. That’s why we use project management processes.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

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Why AI & Automation Are Actually Friends to Design

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Artificial intelligence. Just hearing the phrase has been a trigger for many in the technology world since that creepy Haley Joel Osment film circa 2001. But more recently, artificial intelligence and machine learning strike fear into the hearts of skilled workers for an entirely different reason: job security, or lack thereof.

Smart-home devices, streaming services, self-checkouts, even Google searches are ways that artificial intelligence has seeped into everyday life, exemplifying the abilities of computers and machines to master both simple and complex tasks. In some instances, these technological advancements make our lives easier, but for some people, their proliferation has meant job loss and skill replacement. There’s no wonder that when artificial intelligence starts being mentioned along with web design and site creation, the spidey senses of designers all over the world start tingling.

designers think outside the box, something that AI just can’t do

But let’s get real about what AI and automation really mean for designers for a second. Talented designers with busy schedules should view these advancements as virtual assistants. For some small businesses on a limited budget, the websites that artificial intelligence can pump out might be fine…for a while. However, as businesses grow, change, require updating and customization to adapt to their customer base, the expertise of creative and talented designers will always be needed. Even the best AI that we see today is limited by evaluating, replicating, and revising what already exists. It may be able to mix 1,000 different color schemes into 10 million potential combinations, but great designers think outside the box, something that AI just can’t do.

In fact, rather than being scared of automation, designers ought to embrace automation and artificial intelligence as a way to unleash their creative thinking. Delegate repetitive, straightforward tasks to the right software, and suddenly you have time to bring your best ideas to the table and push the boundaries of your own innovation. 

Where AI has Failed in Design

The ultimate goal of artificial intelligence and automation in design work is a grand vision that has yet to be realised.

Consider the case of The Grid, which began as a crowdfunding campaign in 2014. The “revolutionary” product posed itself as an artificial intelligence solution for building thoughtfully, yet automatically, designed websites in five minutes. Research “Reviews of the Grid” in any search engine and you’ll be met with scathing criticism with only some small praise sprinkled in. Most of the initial users cite underwhelming results, the feeling of being duped by the Grid’s marketing tactics, nonsensical placement of text, and ultimately, the Grid being a complete waste of money for the resulting product. Even at the low cost of $100, compared to hiring a talented designer, most users felt their investment was wasted.

For the AI capabilities that exist now, most small business owners, or those looking to put together a simple website, are better off using drag and drop site builders (Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, etc) that have been around for ages. Even so, there are plenty of businesses still willing to hire designers to take this simple task off their plate due to a lack of technical expertise or lack of time. And let’s be honest, are there even enough talented (keyword here!) designers out there to keep up with the millions of websites created every year, without each one working themselves to death? 

Where Automation Shines for Designers

Fortunately for good designers, it appears for now that the days of artificial intelligence completely taking over their jobs is a fantasy. However, what AI and automation do offer designers is a solid starting point for success, eliminating much of the lower-level grunt work that most designers would rather skip anyway.

Even well-received AI website builders like Firedrop still require a basic eye for design and specialised knowledge to produce truly unique, high-converting, and user-friendly websites. Tools and practices that designers should adopt are the artificial intelligence and automation resources that will help them do their jobs better, faster, and leave them with more time to focus on project elements that AI cannot accomplish on its own.

Bridging the Gap Between Designers and Developers

Well-established brands are likely to already have design systems in place that guide the creation of new elements across their digital profiles whether on social media, various mobile apps, or different sections of a website. But even in large corporations — excepting those who have perfected the process — there’s often a breakdown between a designer’s vision and resulting product from the developers. It stems from the basic difference in how they each approach their work and the limitations of the systems they use.

While component libraries — or even full design systems for that matter — won’t reconcile every question, they provide both developers and designers a source of truth to work from that both parties can understand. Design collaboration tools like Invision and Visme, specifically, keep designers and developers on the same page with automated version saving and code-friendly workflows.  

Understanding the Consumer

I don’t suggest using artificial intelligence to produce content for your site

Digging into and understanding the behaviours and habits of site users is a relatively new component of site design, but offers invaluable insights. Tools like HotJar, Mouseflow, or Smartlook make it simple to see holes or leaks in your conversion funnels, detect which page elements users are interacting with, and which they’re not interested in to refine the look and feel of a page for maximum conversions. Even though these tools provide the data, it still takes a keen eye and understanding of design to implement the right changes to improve site performance.

Site content is another way that artificial intelligence has the potential to improve our understanding of customer behaviour and improve site performance for individual users. I don’t suggest using artificial intelligence to produce content for your site, no matter how much the results have improved. However, static landing pages or a single set of further reading recommendations are unlikely to appeal to the majority of site visitors. Artificial intelligence tools like CliClap and Personyze instantly collect and analyse consumer data to provide dynamic, personalised experiences that drive more leads and encourage conversions. Creative designers will also learn from this data to improve customer experience with other pages or elements throughout the site.

Removing Distracting, Time-Sucking Administrative Tasks

Because “artificial intelligence” has become a term with such negative connotations, we often overlook the simple way that AI actually makes our work lives better and easier. Machine learning in email filtering is a great example of this. Consider a simple interface like a Gmail inbox. We have the option to mark certain senders as spam or as important, and our inbox learns that type of communication is and isn’t useful to the user. Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, and more all take cues from the user behaviour of liking a certain song, artists, or genre of music to build customised playlists. There are a myriad of ways that artificial intelligence and its branches of disciplines merge with our everyday lives. 

Some of the most useful automations for business, and especially for designers, are related to the administrative tasks that frequently take time away or distract from more pressing projects. A perfect example of automation that can relieve stress and cut down on mindless work is an email autoresponder. I’ve always found that having time blocked off in my calendar to tackle complex or important projects helps me to focus on the task at hand and be more efficient. In order to more effectively block out my time, closing my email and setting an autoresponder to reply to all incoming emails serves two purposes: 

  1. Lets those trying to get in touch with me know that I only check my email at certain times of the day and that my response may not be immediate — tempering their expectations of when they might hear from me.
  2. Relieves my personal stress of being tethered to my inbox, splitting my focus, and also saves the time of having to initially respond to each email individually. 

This is just one simple way to use automation in your email, although there are many others to explore.

While Zapier isn’t the only workflow automation service on the market, it’s probably the most well known. Workflow automation reduces time spent on mind-numbing, repetitive tasks and helps designers connect apps that might not natively work together. Do you keep a task list in Todoist? Set up a Zap, then create a task in Todoist anytime someone mentions you on Asana or assigns you a task in Trello.

This is especially helpful for freelance designers who work with multiple clients across various project management platforms. The potential for automation to relieve unnecessary mental overhead for designers is nearly limitless.

Don’t be Afraid of AI, Embrace It

The bottom line of this brief overview of artificial intelligence and automation in design is that this emerging technology isn’t something designers should be scared of. In fact, it’s something to welcome with open arms because ultimately it can make our jobs, and our lives, better. Leave the monotonous tasks of collecting and analysing huge amounts of data or administrative minutiae to the machines; they can handle it.

Save the interesting, creative, abstract work for the talented designers who can turn AI recommendations into unique and intuitive digital experiences. Making the relationship between artificial intelligence and design symbiotic will yield the best results for every entity involved: the business, the AI, and yes, even the designer.

 

Featured image via Unsplash.

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