Adrian Johnson

Today I’ve been taking a quick look at Wunderkit, the new productivity tool from 6Wunderkinder. It’s starting point is task management – a little bit like Wunderlist, 6Wunderkinder’s other product, but with Wunderkit you can also add notes, and share details with others. I’ve not managed to use it alot so far, so here are my first few thoughts.

So, how’s it going? Well, the first thing you notice is the gorgeous UI. It simply is a beauty. From the sign-up and login screens to the detailed dashboards and other pages, each section has been carefully thought out not only in terms of productivity but also look and feel. The logic of where everything is placed, and how the user navigates from one screen to another is also well thought out and very clear. If you look at the website or other products, you can tell 6Wunderkinder take a lot of time and care to ensure everything looks and feels right.

As Wunderkit is in beta there are bound to be few little niggles. The most important one for me is responsiveness – the loading time for the updates to timelines (not sure of the terminology yet) is a little too slow for my liking. Although there is the spinning wheel to show it is loading, I still think the process needs to be speeded up a little. [Update 31/01/12 - Kirsty from Wunderkinder has said (comment below) they are working on the speed issues. I have noticed it has improved over the last couple of days]. The other niggle is lack of tooltips. I wasn’t sure how to do some things and hovered the mouse over a link, and nothing appears. These aren’t major gripes though, and I’m sure they will be fixed soon.

Other users had lists of features they wanted and felt were missing from Wunderkit, and 6Wunderkinder actively encourage users to share feedback and feature requests. I’m sure Wunderkit will grow over time, and the little niggles I had will be fixed.

6Wunderkinder intend to charge for Wunderkit, and I am pleased with that approach. I do like free products but I recognise that people who work in start-ups have to eat and pay their bills. We don’t know what the price points are yet, and although there seems to be a lot of activity at the moment on Wunderkit, this may slow down as soon as 6Wunderkinder start charging. That’s not a bad thing – one of the problems I have with twitter is that there are too many updates, and people re-post the same tweet daily for maximum exposure. It’s too early to say whether this will happen on Wunderkit or what the level and type of activity will be. (At the moment people seem to be discussing Wunderkit).

Would I use Wunderkit consistently? At this stage probably not. It’s not because I don’t like it, or have doubts, it’s just that I’m the sort of person who would make a list, then not look at it again, which is not the sort of use Wunderkit requires. But if, and I suspect it will, Wunderkit becomes more of a project management and collaboration tool, then I may be tempted. Oh and desktop/iPhone clients would be useful too, though I think they’re in the works. Having said all that, I would probably look at it more that Google+, even though they’re different tools. Wunderkit seems more of a joy to use than Google+ – must be that UI!

As well as keeping an eye on Wunderkit, I will-do keep an eye on 6Wunderkinder. They are one of the best start-ups I’ve been tracking for a couple of years and are destined for bigger things in 2012.