Every once in a while someone wakes up and starts to challenge a fundamental concept of everyday life. Karl Benz probably layed down his morning newspaper one day and said something like "I've just about had it with these horses." Thomas Edison was like "F*** Candles." And apparently the team at Tydlig, seems to have had a very similar thought about the common calculator App. What's so great about Tydlig, and what can we take away from it's spot on design? Here are my thoughts:
1. It's a complete overhaul of a widely common concept
Skimming humanity's to-do list, one would argue that "inventing the calculator" has a big fat checkmark behind it. They exist, we know how they work. They come in all forms, shapes, sizes, and price ranges. I mean hell, somebody build one in Minecraft. Why make a new one? Never change a running system, right?
Except what if, the very way a calculator works could be so much smarter than it is right now? Most calculators that come preinstalled on our devices do nothing more than replicating the calculators we owned physically for decades. They emulate the buttons, they emulate the functionality, and worst case, they emulate the 7-segment LED-display look.
Thankfully, the team at Tydlig remembered, what elswhere staggeringly often is forgotten: software creates so much more possibilities, than simply depicting the physical world.
So instead of seeing a calculator as a given concept, Tydlig reinvented it. They let you keep your results, use them as variables, label them, update them in real time and draw graphs with them. They let you undo stuff and export pdfs and screenshots to show your thoughts to friends. All while beeing as familiar as that 10 digit brick you used to have lying around in your desk drawer.
2. It's so. much. fun.
If a new app has the ambition to make it into my every day work flow, it has to do a lot more then simply work well. It has to make me want to use it. It has to make me think about it when I'm not using it. Going: "this would be so much more fun if i was doing it in this other app instead of the one I'm, using right now."
As any other article likes to cite at one point or another: humans are creatures of habits, which, kind of proofs the very concept itself. Besides the big chunks of work that I spend most of my time on, my average day consists of countless side tasks, and I have tools for almost all of them. Those tasks are so small, that often I'll be done with them before thinking about how I'll takle them. So unless an app is fun enough that I actively think about it the moment such a small task arises, it will never make it into my everyday work flow. Ultimately ending up in the "holy shit what is this and why is it on my phone"-folder.
Somewhere between the average calculator and excel, there was a space that had the potential to make everyday math fun for the average joe. And Tydlig filled that void.
It let's you label your calculations with plain text, but also with emojis, which makes calculations for a holiday trip not only fun to set up and share, but also surprisingly clear.
If you delete a number, you get a particle animation so sublime, it's literally a firework triggered by your thumb. The last time i had so much fun triggering an micro interaction was when twitter redesigned their fav button.
Graphs and sliders which let you view your results and edit your inputs in new ways, make you actively want to play around with whatever you are currently calculating. You're not simply calculating your spendings from the weekend anymore. You're starting to ask questions like "How else could I present this" and "What impact would it have, if this number was a little lower". With interactions like those, Tydlig is actively changing the way you're tackling mathematical problems and thereby adding real value for math-phobes like me.
The app manages to trigger my sense for adventure and exploration, which I'd say is a hell of a thing to do for a calculator.
3. It's WYSIWYG
Last but not least there is the way Tydlig presents itself on the appstore that makes it all the more charming to me.
Just like most users, I don't spare a second thought if it comes to paying 4€ for a beer. But 1,99€ for an app, hold on a minute! Somehow, the Appstore page of Tydlig is so well crafted that I didn't need not think twice before buying it.
Within the first 5 seconds of the promotional video the whole idea behind the app is sold and understood. What follows are 10 seconds of features that explain the additional value of the app, while deepening the understanding of it, all without using a single word.
There is no screen in this video, that couldn't have been captured out of the app. And a few seconds later, when I opened Tydlig for the first time, I felt like I was using it for years.
If you are a UX Designer, buy this app now
As the time of this writing, Tydlig is 2,99€ on the Appstore, which is a more then fair price, considering most Apps nowadays are free, unless you want to use them, in which case a subscription will cost you 6€ a month.
So if you haven't already, I advice you to go and get Tydlig. May it be to calculate how much shipping costs you're saving with your prime subscription, or your yearly spendings on avocado toast, or simply, to support outstanding design.