There are so many time tracker apps and websites available for users for various price points from free to subscription, as well mood tracker apps that sync with journaling practices. For Mind Your Time, I wanted to create an app that did both. I’m not as concerned with tracking freelance hours spent for invoicing, but understand that will be a useful integration, so I also wanted to make sure the output information would be easy to transfer to other apps and programs.<\/p>\n
However, there are several apps that provide similar services that I used as inspiration and guidance as I developed Mind Your Time.<\/p>\n
Soon after I created my form in January 2018, I saw an Instagram advertisement for Timeular<\/span><\/a>, which integrates with a small physical device you turn over throughout the day to passively track time spent. Its goals are the same as mine: potentially achieve more in less time (the Pomodoro technique<\/a> is well-proven to be effective to improve efficiency), track, understand and improve how you work. I love the idea of passively tracking time spent while doing the activity, but the device is prohibitively expensive for some.<\/span><\/p>\n A heavy influencer on my app design was Jststrt<\/span><\/a>, which is actually a web app. I was originally interested in creating something that would be cross-platform and therefore be usable on computers and non-iPhone devices. Jststrt enables the user to track habits in a calendar, monitor consistency, and eventually improve by staying motivated to maintain and increase good habits. I liked the universality of use, calendar focus, and easy sign up process.<\/p>\n When I discovered\u00a0Time Planner<\/span><\/a>\u00a0I was especially excited because of how good it looks and how similar it seemed to be to what I wanted to create, but it appears to no longer exist. Further research led me to believe that it’s been renamed to\u00a0<\/span>ATracker Time Tracker<\/span><\/a>\u00a0because the latter has a similar look, feel, and commendations as the former. The \u201cnew\u201d version lets you track your time spent, customize the user interface, and produce reports. All that’s missing is how you feel.<\/p>\n Daylio<\/span><\/a>\u00a0is another app that accomplishes something similar to what I hope to with Mind Your Time, but the look and feel is a very different approach than the one I wish to take. It does track both mood and time spent with statistics and a calendar in order to become productive. The reviews mentioned a desire for customization, which inspired me to create some basic suggestions as well as offer opportunities for the user to customize their tasks and emotions.<\/p>\n Hours<\/span><\/a>\u00a0has a comprehensive and detailed list of tasks that it enables you to do as an individual or team member. Although I picked up some techniques from Hours like on-screen reports, additional notes, and calendar view to see which days are filled in or not, looking into it inspired me to focus more on the individual with Mind Your Time.<\/p>\n Sessions<\/span><\/a>\u00a0is focused on the individual but also on habit tracking and timers.\u00a0Lifetick<\/span><\/a>\u00a0includes a social aspect so that you can enlist others to help you achieve your goals.\u00a0Tracker – Mood & Energy Diary<\/span><\/a>\u00a0features the aspects I like such as tracking\u00a0mood and energy levels throughout the day as well as customized notifications sent throughout the day.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are so many time tracker apps and websites available for users for various price points from free to subscription, as well mood tracker apps that sync with journaling practices. For Mind Your Time, I wanted to create an app that did both. I’m not as concerned with tracking freelance hours spent for invoicing, but… Read More<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research","category-ux-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/growlingwillow.com\/web170\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/growlingwillow.com\/web170\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/growlingwillow.com\/web170\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growlingwillow.com\/web170\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growlingwillow.com\/web170\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/growlingwillow.com\/web170\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":244,"href":"https:\/\/growlingwillow.com\/web170\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions\/244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/growlingwillow.com\/web170\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growlingwillow.com\/web170\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/growlingwillow.com\/web170\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Jststrt (just start)<\/h2>\n
Time Planner\/ATracker Time Tracker<\/h2>\n
Daylio<\/h2>\n
Hours<\/h2>\n
Honorable Mentions<\/h2>\n