TheDeadline
Work better together.
Branding
One of the main things that sets TheDeadline from other todo apps, is Eve — the intelligent personal assistant. When the team behind TheDeadline introduced us to the concept of Eve, we immediately knew we needed to make her a witty, likable avatar that will interact with the users. We worked together with Miloš who designed Eve as a slightly dorky, but likeable redhead.
Since the concept of Eve revolved around communication, and talking to the user, we produced a couple of variants we used throughout the app to communicate various messages.
Early on in the design and branding of TheDeadline we took a bold approach — we put a ginger girl as the logo mark, remember? — we planned to extend that on to the Web app as well, and we did that through the unique color scheme.
Lesson Learned
A unique and unusual color scheme really works well for setting you apart from the competition in a crowded market such as personal productivity. How many purple Web apps have you seen lately?
Working on TheDeadline was our first real-life experience with HTML5, as in making something that will actually go in production. We have implemented a fluid layout with a fixed width sidebar in order to adapt to the users' window width preference, and use the most of the screen real estate for actual the todos.
Filters
One of the more interesting and tricky parts of the application were the filters. Since users can filter the content by several different filter types (and even save the filters as tabs), the challenge was to make a interface that was easy enough to use by an average user, but at the same time not limit the functionality.
Marketing Site
Different concepts, and the evolution of the landing page.
- 1. Initial concept (on the right), decided it was too “artsy” for an average productivity geek (early adopter techie/programmer).
- 2. Second concept (left–most screenshot), we went live with this one, and it served its purpose well until the service gathered some traction.
- 3. Current landing page (center) features a slightly different aesthetic, but does a far better job of selling TheDeadline to new users, now that there are more features, data, testimonials, and articles by big publications such as Lifehacker and others.
Mobile Web Application
A todo app that's not there when you're on the go is no good. That's why we designed an HTML5 mobile Web app for TheDeadline, ready for you to load it up on your mobile device, and tap away.
