The wonderful Wunderlist – My favorite product
Looking for the perfect to-do list app? This just might be it!
I’ve always been a fan of to-do lists. Whether it’s the classic pen and paper or the latest app, there’s just something about checking of an item on a list that adds organizational sanity to our lives. Although I’ve dabbled in many apps, I’ve always found myself returning to that simple pen and paper checklist. As soon as an app begins to make an impression on me, one feature or a lack thereof always gravitates me back to the antiquated world of pen and paper. Always that is, until now…Enter Wunderlist!
What makes this simple app so special? Let me break down the five features that draw me most to this app:
Accessibility
The nice thing about Wunderlist is that I can access it from anywhere. Whether I’m on the move on my phone or at the office on my laptop, I can access Wunderlist through all devices. In the grocery store, I prefer to use the grocery list on my phone and at the office, I prefer to use the tasks lists on my laptop. Wunderlist accommodates for my preferences, providing easy accessibility to users like myself.
Desktop View
Mobile View
Sharing
Often, my roommate texts me at the grocery store, “Sarib, I’m at the grocery store, what all do we need? Text me ASAP!!!!” Although I appreciate his rush to get out of the grocery store as punctuated by his army of exclamation marks, I could really do away with these emergency texts. With Wunderlist, I have my separate grocery list prepared, and can quickly take stock of the fridge and kitchen to update that list and share it with my roommate. Go to the list, click share at the bottom, select the contact to share the list with, and Voilà! My roommate knows what he needs to get.
Prioritizing
“All tasks are not created equal”. If this isn’t a famous proverb yet, it should be. Wunderlist has a great star feature you could use to prioritize items on your list. Simply click the star button on the checklist item, and Wunderlist will mark the item with a red star, bringing the item by default to the top of the list. You can further go in each task and add details, such as due date of the task, notes and attachments related to the task, and setting email reminders alerting you of the task. This helps provide more context about the task and the important deadlines.
Recycling
Some checklists, such as my grocery list, don’t change that much every time I go out for groceries. I’ve used many checklist where once I check of an item from the list, it’s dumped in the digital landscape; however, on Wunderlist you can access and easily recover checked of items on your lists instead of creating a new list every time. Let’s say you want to recover some checked of items from your last grocery list. Just go to the grocery list, click completed items, and uncheck the items you want to recycle back into the list. Why subject yourself to the tyranny of typing when a few clicks can do the job for you?
Design
In the rich history of product development, perhaps no wiser words were uttered than the following, “Keep it simple, stupid.” For all the features I’ve listed above, I did not need to be demoed this product. In the competitive landscape of to-do lists with multiple apps vying for my attention, no one’s got a second to spare. Making the user think about it and work for it is criminal! Although Wunderlist has some advanced options too, it doesn’t confuse the 95% of users with what they don’t need because the 5% of the users who really do need the extra features will make the extra effort to learn more about the product anyway. The impeccable job done by Wunderlist is that it makes the essential features of checklists intuitive and accessible to a new user like myself.
Main Menu
At this point, you may be thinking, how much is he getting paid by Wunderlist to write all these nice things? Relax, I have some bad news for you too! 😊
One thing Wunderlist could improve on are the alarm options. Currently, Wunderlist emails you the reminder at your set time. However, I’d prefer a phone like alarm to go off that’s more explicit. Often, when there are critical deadline tasks, although I add them to Wunderlist, I additionally add a phone alarm for them because email notifications are not reliable. Often, I miss the Wunderlist notification and the phone alarm becomes a valuable safety net. Save me the hassle of movement Wunderlist! I don’t want to keep switching back and forth between my phone alarms and Wunderlist.
Conclusion
Although that feeling of marking a checkbox with a pen and paper is hard to let go of, the digital advantages of the wonderful Wunderlist more than compensate. It is the amalgamation of the features listed above packaged in an elegant and intuitive design that bring out the WOW factor in this product. A to-do list cannot do the task for you but from all the traditional and digital solutions I’ve scrutinized, Wunderlist has been the most empowering enabler. Still stuck in the traditional world of pen and paper checklists? Here’s the last item to mark of:
What’s your favorite product? And what makes it stand out for you? Please feel free to share in the comments below.