MADE IN GERMANY
Your ultimate to-do list
Things 3
Organize your life
Work deadlines, pumping up bicycle tyres, planning holidays – the list of things to take care of on any given day is mind boggling. Things 3 will help you neatly organise the chaos with an easy-to-use interface that shows you all your tasks at a glance. You may be a fan of a simple list, or more of a to-do list pro who needs to manage big projects – either way, the app is designed to suit all needs.
About Things 3 by Cultured Code
‣ App launched: 2008
‣ Company headquarters: Stuttgart
‣ Created by: Werner Jainek, Christian Krämer, Jürgen Schweizer, Oliver Marquetant
‣ Team size: 12
‣ Fun fact: Things was one of the first 500 apps on the App Store
‣ Popular: Worldwide
One of the reasons why the app has excelled is how powerful yet user-friendly it is. “We attached great importance to Things being very simple despite its versatility,” says Werner Jainek, co-creator of the app. Notable is the lack of hierarchies and subfolders, so you don’t run the risk of losing some tasks because you simply overlooked them.
“A to-do list is very personal, it’s a conversation with yourself,” Jainek explains. For him and the team, it’s important that the app is discrete while being flexible enough to adapt to what users need.
For larger projects, there are lots of handy tools to help you plan, organise and create your own workflows to enhance productivity: tags, for example, are the ideal way to prioritise tasks or assign them to other people.
Things 3 strikes the perfect balance between simplicity and versatility. You can create tasks via shortcuts, email or dictate them with Siri, so there’s a way for every user to add to-dos and work through them in a more targeted way. This consistent concept of user-friendliness led the Stuttgart–based team to win an Apple Design Award for their Mac app in 2009.
A to-do list is very personal, it’s a conversation with yourself.
– Werner Jainek, co-creator of [i]Things[/i]
But that’s not the only milestone Jainek and his team have achieved. “When Apple announced the App Store in 2007, we immediately set to work on an iPhone app,” Jainek says. “By the deadline, we were actually done with the app.” The original Things was one of the first 500 apps on the App Store and has been helping people all over the world to better structure their daily lives ever since.
In 2017, the team received their second Apple Design Award for their iPhone app. This is definitely a team that knows the value of using the right to-do list to achieve their goals.