Productivity Apps and Tools We Love

Lack of productivity puts projects behind schedule and aggravates clients. Luckily, we have found the following apps and tools to help keep our projects on schedule, our clients informed and our processes streamlined.

Slack

Slack is one of our favorite communication apps. It allows us to collaborate and communicate with clients and team members all in one place with a searchable history and organized conversation threads. And perhaps most importantly, eliminates the need for almost all email.

It also has many integrations including GitHub, Google Drive, Dropbox and Asana that help us spend less time juggling and more time focusing on the task at hand. Integrations with real time notifications for project updates, code deployments, feature requests, and file sharing help keep our team and clients always in the know.

The biggest plus for us has been shared, project specific, threads to keep our communication organized and to the point. No more digging through 200 different emails to find a specific request.

Asana

Asana is our favorite project management app. In web development there are many milestones and tasks that need to be completed before a site can go live, and with Asana, we can keep our team organized while giving our clients a place to check in on project progress.

Sketch

If you haven’t heard of Sketch, you need to run, not walk to check them out. This app has revolutionized the designer/developer collaboration process. Gone are the days of Photoshop and Illustrator mockups…with Sketch, we are able to take a design from an agency or designer and seamlessly turn it into beautiful code.

This vector graphics editor won the Apple Design Award in 2012 and hasn’t lost momentum since. With the highly organized system, clean interface, comprehensive plugin community, and universal use for all creatives, it’s no wonder this tool has been taking the creative world by storm.

The only downside to Sketch is it is currently available on Mac only.

Adobe XD

Along with Sketch, Adobe XD has been an integral design tool over the last year. XD offers more web/app specific design tools for our partner designers to work with than previous software such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. With the ability to share XD design concepts through the web we are able to have quicker team reviews and design collaboration. Shared concepts via the cloud are always up to date and eliminate the need to send new AI or PSD files back and forth.

Zeplin

Designer to developer file hand-off has been transitioning over the years. Most designers have no idea how developers work and vice versa. Zeplin is a new tool that works with design software such as Sketch, Adobe XD and Photoshop to help the project transition from designer to developer. With the ability to easily provide design specs such as colors, font sizes, dimensions, and more with just a few clicks, developers no longer have to spend time mastering design tools and getting lost in art boards.