Productivity in the browser
Hello Medium,
It’s been a long time since my last post. Mostly because of work and the public launch of Membr, my Chrome-based note-taking extension.
I rolled out some features and improvements leading up to the launch, this included a redesigned landing page and finally the ability to generate summaries of any website’s content among other minor bug fixes and improvements.
I recently did a Product Hunt launch for it and let’s say I have lots of lessons on what not to do and what to do when launching a digital product 😅.
I am a UI Developer by trade and like most people, I do a huge chunk of my work in the browser. In today’s post, I’ll shed light on some of the tools I use to stay productive and efficient.
You’ll notice that some of these tools are AI-enabled. It’s an exciting time in the productivity space.
Ideation
Figma + FigJam
Figma is my go-to tool for visual design and I use it mostly for user interface and graphic design. I love it because it’s intuitive and runs in the browser.
FigJam is an online whiteboard for ideation and brainstorming. I love it over Miro and other whiteboarding tools because it has great Figma integration. All my design work, from ideation to execution, can be found in one place.
Copy AI
Copy.ai is an online ai-powered tool for copywriting. I mostly use it when brainstorming marketing ideas for example social media content, blog posts and advertising copy.
The capability of ai-assisted writing tools is on the rise and the space shows tons of promise.
DALL·E 2 and Stable Diffusion
As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, so too do the ways in which it can be used to create things. One of the latest examples of this is DALL·E 2, an AI program that can generate images from textual descriptions.
Gone are the days of painfully scouring the internet for decent stock photography.
DALL·E 2 can combine concepts, attributes, and styles to generate images.
For example, the hero image used in this article was generated using DALL·E 2. Here is the prompt I used.
“zen garden, abstract, digital art”
If you’re looking for an offline version of Stable Diffusion (DALL·E 2 is a paid tool with a free tier) you can try out Diffusion Bee for M1 & M2 Macbooks or use the Hugging Face API.
Data Collection
Typeform
I use Typeform to carry out online surveys. It’s simple to use, customizable and has a great design.
Tally
Tally is another online form builder like Typeform with a twist, it works like a document, a Notion document to be specific.
Writing
Notion
Notion is a powerful document editor that truly shines when you leverage its template ecosystem.
It can be used for basic documentation, as a knowledgebase, content management system, database and so much more.
Grammarly
I use Grammarly for spell-checking and to improve my writing. It covers everything from grammar to style and tone. The best part is it’s available everywhere I write on the web from Google Docs to Twitter.
Membr
Like most people I typically write down companion notes to better understand information and to quickly catch up on forgotten bits. And as I mentioned earlier, a huge chunk of my work happens in the browser, everything from research and ideation to creation and collaboration.
However, I felt there lacked a frictionless note-taking experience. I wanted my notes to be instantly accessible in one click and sit alongside the content I’m currently working on. That’s why I built Membr Notes for Chrome.
