Which App Has Your Data? A very modern data problem

So you are well equipped with a Dropbox account, a Google drive account, Evernote and a “To Do list” manager like Nozbe. I could have added One Note, Google Keep, Trello, Asana and any number of other applications that are designed to keep your data and present it to you in a useful way.

Having many applications available on your phone, tablet, laptop and desktop PC is great but brings with it some questions like:

• If someone sends you something, an idea, a photo, a PDF file,where do you put it?  
• Can you easily find your data?
• Do your applications work together and integrate well with your communication tools such as your email?
• Is your data on your device or in the cloud or both?

It is a very modern data problem.   

My Top 5 Productivity and Collaboration Apps For Android

Here are my top 5 productivity and collaboration apps for use on Android phones and tablets.

1. Evernote (documenting, sharing, storing files, lists, clippings)
2. Nozbe (to do list, collaboration of tasks, interface with Evernote)
3. Dropbox (sharing, storing files)
4. Google Drive (sharing, storing files)
5. Slack (communication, collaboration, sharing)

There are similarities between some of these tools.  Google Drive and Dropbox are essentially the same thing and there are aspects of Evernote and Slack and Nozbe that overlap a lot.

These are all mature tools now (August 2015) and all run well on Android devices having all benefited from elements of the ‘material’ design which has focused the UX designer on trying to achieve a balance between information and clutter.

They are all free to try: slack and Evernote are free but evernote can be upgraded to a premium version, Google Drive and Dropbox can also be free but you do need to pay if you want to use more than a small amount of data, Nozbe is free if you only want a tiny number of projects but for unlimited projects you do need to purchase a full registration.

Future blogs will dive into how I use each of these and how you can set them up to serve your needs well.

Why I Have Stopped Using Trello

There is nothing wrong with Trello. It works as advertised and it works well.

There are a few things I would want to change, maybe they have gone too far down the minimalist user interface route, as have others, but it is still a very useable piece of software with a consistent approach across the desktop (web app), tablet and phone.

So why have I stopped using it?

Simply, I have no use for it right now.

I have no use for it right now

The concept of keeping your information on ‘cards’ in ‘stacks’ is compelling and something I have done in the physical world on and off for the past 30+ years since I learnt how to manage projects using index cards.
My information is distributed across a number of applications and Trello doesn’t link to them so the data held in Trello was in isolation and when a card was finished with and discarded, I couldn’t access it.

This made me uncomfortable with adding the rich data like photo, graphics, web clippings etc.. to my Trello cards. So my cards remained short and text only which is fine but then it just became an online version of simple text based index cards which I could drag and drop between stacks maybe to identify different contexts or activities or times applicable to that information.

Time for some examples; I had a ‘board’ (trello term for a collection of cards that can be seen at one time on the screen) for the week so it had one stack per day and in each stack I would have a card per appointment or key task that needed to be done… but this duplicated elements of my calendar and my to do list.

I had a board for my major work project with stacks for the phases of the elements of that project and cards for each element. The stacks were named: backlog, in analysis, in development, in testing, deployment, issues etc… but these were either duplicating the ticketing system at my workplace or my project documents.

In the end I found that every use I had for Trello was already accommodated by other software that linked with each other and had data archiving facilities and had an easier interface for quick manipulation of the data cards.

I have removed the app from my phone and my web browser shortcuts but kept it on my android tablet and have promised myself that I will revisit it in the future, I have a history of revisiting apps when I can see that they are either not for me now or they are going to continually improve the experience.

This has happened with the software that I am now using for my to do list but more on that in another post on another day.

We all have apps and applications that we have downloaded, installed, used for a while and discarded as it doesn’t fit with our current practices.

My CALL TO ACTION to you from this post is to identify those apps you don’t use and let me know what they are in the comments below.