Welcome to our new segment "10 apps that can do it all". A productivity review from product people for product people. We will ask selected, CX and product experts to tell us what tools they like, how often they use them and how much they pay for the perfect product design stack.
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Fay:
Hi, Elisa! Tell us a little bit about you and what you have been up to?
Elisa:
I am a designer at heart. Whatever the job title, it is about storytelling and navigating a user down a path to get them where they need to be. That's what excites me.
In the last, I have been on a journey to better understand how to create innovation and how to design something that is chaotic by nature. Dealing with chaos and change is hard and resilience is key to survive. Being a designer and talking about innovation means to be comfortable with ambiguity.
It is about fast learnings and actually being at peace with the fact that you don't know what the outcome is.
Fay:
What do you care about most?
Elisa:
Clearly is designing beautiful experiences and services. I really like that word. Beautiful means functional, respectful, meaningful:
Like basic needs, i.e. privacy etc.
The world needs more purpose and more meaning. We need designers to be able to continue the work we have to do. There will always be injustice, poverty, the downside in the world. But the little improvements.
Most important is the inclusion of purpose. An environment-friendly inclusion. Why did we become designers?
Fay:
As a designer, if you were stranded on a deserted island, and could only install ten apps to work with, which would it be? (Assume that you have access to the cloud, unlimited space and a 5G internet connection).
Elisa:
Well, I would love to have something that's super powerful in terms of documentation. A good writing tool helps me to get to the core of my questions and the problems I wont to solve. I guess the word on mac should do.
- There is no drawing tool that can replace, drawing or sketching.
- Something about voice recording — it is always good to listen to your voice again. Later down the project and your understanding of your project has evolved.
- Something to test — we use a lot of prototyping tools but user testing tools that let users try to make sense. A good user testing tool that can almost record the thoughts of the user.
- The sketch I use for both low- and high fidelity. A collaborative version of the sketch would be the dream.
- Instant messaging and sending a picture
- A ping pong table — entertainment also for boosting the design teams mood. Is it a tool? no? but it helps teams
- Interactive walls, where we see all the work we do. But these screens are very expensive (minority report style)
- Good reads, I have subscribed to audible and listening to books is just perfect. I feel that I have less and less time to read books
- Podcast bookmarking — we are so lucky to live now because there are so many interesting stories.
- Newsletters sometimes arrive at the right time. You are looking to update your folio and then you get a Van Schneider newsletter on how to update
- Some folks love videos and I have a Netflix account but seem to have no time.
- I joined a debating club in London and try to move to real experiences
Fay:
What about Instaread?
Elisa:
I like it and effectively there is a need to shorten the version of a book. And I think I deleted it when I started it. However, I think there is a price. It is not about the number of books you read but more how you integrate the ideas you. It is great to discover ideas and lets you decide if I should read the full version of what I have listened to is enough. You make the assumption...
What are your 10 Apps that can do it all?
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