Sunday, May 22, 2011

Review: Flow – Good Looking Task Management with Collaboration

Flow is a web-based task management application, which is also available as an iPhone App. Jarel Remick recently wrote a good review about Flow on appstorm. Therefore I will not go into all the details of flow, but instead urge you to read the review by Jarel Remick.

Design: Nice

I agree with Jarel about the good design. It has written JavaScript all over it, and looks good in it.
flow
There are a few things which I do not like. The items in the left sidebar are quite small – they do not resemble the importance they have. The DropDown-Sign and the Add-Sign on the bottom left are easily overlooked.
Jarel wrote that he liked the speed, with which Flow performs. I have to say I experienced quite a few “Loading” icons – a task manager should not leave you waiting to get into the “Flow”.
Design Rating: 4/5

Features: Collaboration Is Central

Flow makes it easy to delegate tasks and share whole lists of tasks. The collaborator does not even have to have a Flow account – an email address suffices. What bugs me is that you always have to add the collaborators one by one – there are no groups.
Within a Task you can see the whole activity like comments renamings, attachments. In my opinion that is too much. Tasks should be things that can be done within a few hours. There is little need for discussion. On the other hand, I could imagine much discussion in a list as a whole, but there is no such possibility. To me a list comprises many tasks related to each other.
Feature Rating: 4/5


Check out the video introduction to flow:

Overall Impression: Almost Flow

Flow does many things the right way. The design and usability are among the best I have seen. The feature set has much from what one could wish for.
Yet, there are few things which restrain me from getting into the “Flow”: Should I look at all my tasks, or just at the upcoming ones? At which list should I look first? The checked off items distract me a bit from the unfinished tasks.
There is also the price: $9,99 per month per account. You get discounts, if you register you whole team. Still, it is comparatively expensive.
Overall Rating: 4/5

3 comments:

  1. Our company has recently switched to using a new task manager called Dooster. We're so glad we did!

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  2. thanks for the tip. We are definitely going to check it out :)

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  3. Hey will take a look at it. Recently I have signed up for Brightpod (http://brightpod.com), a project management app specifically for marketing teams. Includes readymade workflows & a whole bunch of collaboration features.

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