Below: Q&A with Jonathan Cohen an experience designer from Boulder, Colorado who fell in love with our latest app Strike the first day he saw it.
What do you do?
I'm an Experience Designer at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which is an ad agency in Boulder, Colorado. My role is a dash of information architecture, a scoop of interaction design, topped with design strategy and research. The documents my team and I make get people talking about considerate ways to shape the user's path in future products.
How do you manage and prioritize your tasks?
My to-do lists come across like a bossy parent: "Do laundry!", "Go food shopping", "Start taxes" (a to-do list in itself!). Listing what and when to do things -- and giving those things order -- is how I balance all my responsibilities, chores, and aspirations. To-do lists free my attention to focus on the moment. They help me clear the path ahead and ensure all my other bases are covered. Past-Me may sound like a bossy parent, but really, he just wants the best for Future-Me.
How does Strike help you?
Strike is a to-do reboot. It strips away the categorization and scheduling features of conventional apps and approaches list-making with a new set of values. There's a lot of vicarious projection in list making: "Whoa, Future-Me is about to do some impressive stuff!" You guys designed an interface that brings the message of each to-do item front and center, clearing the mind to envision all kinds of future accomplishments.
I like how the update and delete functions are given gestures instead of buttons or text links that compete for your attention. Since even the blinking text cursor in Word distracts me, I really appreciate tools that hide as much under the hood as possible. And Strike's great interactive walkthrough takes care of discoverability issues.
Overall, I think Strike is the most exciting to-do app to come out in a long time. I'm looking forward to using it for quick to-do lists, and for shared lists with coworkers and friends.
Thanks for reading my two cents on to-dos. I hope you'll say hey on Twitter
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