Outliner7 wants to be the Clear of project management apps
Sunday, May 27, 2012 The App Store isn't short of productivity tools so finding a project management tool that matches your routines and habits shouldn't be a problem. If you're already using any pure outlining software on your desktop the most obvious choice is to check if there's an iOS companion — OmniOutliner and Circus Ponies for the iPad come to mind — otherwise, you can begin your search from scratch.

Despite my addiction to good apps I don't have any go-to solution for planning projects. I tend to use a combination of emails and ToDo lists that aren't helping me to get things done but to have an idea of the tasks to complete before the next one. Some of the most advanced GTD iOS clients such as OmniFocus already have a forecast section that cover these needs. With this limitations, I miss some of the desktop-type experience when it comes to organising my mind on the go: indentations, hierarchies, fluid lists I can rearrange and steps I can check as completed.
Then I find Outliner7 by Ambi Apps, a self-proclaimed outline manager for the iPhone that promises to be easy to use as well as fully-featured. With the amount of alternatives on the App Store I could have picked something else, but the use of gestures here really caught my eye. If you remember Clear by the Brightonians from Realmac software, the typical interface elements to navigate apps disappeared in favour of multitouch gestures. The great use of colour, font sizes and a list view chunkier than the usual on iOS standards made for a very exciting experimental app. What does it have to do with Outliner7 then?
All about the gestures
While I never considered Clear an everyday useful app, Outliner7 has adopted that playful spirit introducing some gestures to manage information. There are still a lot of conventions — specially true when it comes to navigation — that follow Apple interface guidelines, but the attempt to do something different convinced me to give Outliner7 a go.






