Gallery: Tick: A To-Do App That Trades Tedium for Pizzazz
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Tick is a customizable, icon-based to-do list app filled with animations that appeals equally to logic and emotion. *Photo: Taphive*
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Instead of representing each project with an antiseptic line of text, the app showcases them as bold blocks of color personalized with a cute, interactive icon. Users can color code each list, pick one of 64 icons to illustrate it, and when tasks are added or completed the images spring to life—a credit card swipes itself on the edge of its box and snow falls softly on a mountain range. *Photo: Taphive*
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For all the innovation in task management, most apps still treat users like soulless robots whose lives are centered around creating lists and checking boxes. [Tick](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tick/id683780016) is trying to change that with a visually rich app that provides virtual pats on the back. *Photo: Taphive*
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Underneath the custom organizational structure, Tick's to-do lists will be familiar to any Type A app tester. Tick hopes to include a bevy of fonts alongside performance upgrades in the next release. In this new flat world, without the crutch of skeuomorphism, Hassan believes designers are going to have to learn to balance fun and functionality: "Otherwise, you have a soulless bitmap under the glass." *Photo: Taphive*
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Tick's designer, Asem Hassan, believes these design choices are what separate his app from other task trackers. "Where they provide a text to represent a list, we provide an icon. For every dull gray color they have, we have a bright color. For every gesture other apps have, we have a big shiny button." *Photo: Taphive*
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Tick takes the position that task lists aren't that hard technically and the real challenge is changing behavior—a task best handled by appealing to emotion through animated icons and simplifying the process of sharing information using AirPlay. *Photo: Taphive*
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