Freckle time tracking

If you don’t already know, Amy Hoy is a user interaction expert. I’ve admired her work for a long time. She has a very distinct (and cheerful!) design style. And her latest work, freckle, is no exception.

I just signed up and I’m already mesmerized by how smart and attractive it is. By smart, I’m referring mainly to how well the time recording works. It’s only three text boxes, but they do a lot. And I think the attractive part speaks for itself, but maybe a picture will help:

Just looking at it makes me want to use it. And everything throughout is that clean and crisp. For example, check out the link to the quick-start guide, which explains the three text boxes in more detail:

The link itself gives a good indication of where it goes, rather than having an explanation beside or around it. Text can be clutter at times.

It’s just really well done, in my opinion.

Now, there are a couple of downfalls. I’m no expert on time-trackers, but to me, the pricing seems to be a bit high, with the cheapest option weighing in at $24/month. It seems like there should be a $5-$7-$10 range in the mix. Tickspot (what I currently use) has two paid plans that are lower than the lowest paid plan on freckle.

Of course, this is coming from someone who has never charged for a service, nor has done any market research to support this claim. Basically, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I just know that I, personally, would not pay $24/month to use it (and I actually do have a need for this). But maybe I’m just cheap ;-)

Another thing that I find to be useful with time tracking tools is having a widget. I’m not a widget collector or anything, but in this case, it has proven to be pretty handy.

Keep in mind, though, at the time of this writing, freckle is only 2 days old. They may have all sorts of plans for the future (I’d actually bet that they do, and here’s some proof).

Overall, I’m very impressed with how well freckle works. If you’re in the market for a time-tracking tool, I’d give this one a close look. It’s definitely one of the best I’ve seen in terms of user-experience, which is important when you’re trying to be efficient.

Kudos to the freckle team for a job well done!