PRJCT Review

Designed for both contractors and freelancers who may be looking for a solution to simplify the process of tracking time in relation to the projects they're responsible for, PRJCT is a brand new app that features a minimal interface for calculating a project's cost based on a user-predefined hourly rate.

Opening PRJCT for the first time will see the user greeted with the app's home screen. Separating ongoing projects into two menus - “Projects” and “Tasks” - the contractor first adds their project by tapping the Projects menu. To add a new project to the app the user is required to simply pull down on the free space shown. By doing this, the app then creates a new blank item which can be renamed instantly.

Creating a new task for a project follows the same process. Tapping the project a user is looking to create a new task for will spur PRJCT to create a new item related to that project. Upon adding each subsequent new task, the user is also be given the option to set a chosen hourly rate for the project being carried out. This setting controls how fast the cost of the project will accrue, and in real-life situations will likely differ considerably depending on the project.

When a user actually commences on a project, they are given the option to hit play in each item's settings to begin an hourly timer. PRJCT then intelligently calculates the final cost of the active project, and thus what users are owed for completing it, by using the hourly rate originally set when the user first setup the project item - also showing the elapsed time. It's important to remember that creating a Project is not the same as creating a Task. Creating a new project acts as the top of the hierarchy, while any tasks that are required to complete the project are then added to it, and later form the lower layers of the hierarchy.

For those who don't operate in U.S dollars, there's also the option to change this in PRJCT's settings. Here a user can choose from a number of other options; such as hiding the iPhone status bar, changing their default hourly rate, turning the app's sounds off, adding a task count badge to PRJCT's home screen icon, and more.

While I would agree that PRJCT all but excels in its want to provide freelancers with a clean and simple solution to effectively keep track of their time, it should also be noted that the app currently takes advantage of a few touch navigation gestures which may not be immediately clear to the user. For example, to return to the Projects view when buried in a single Task, a user has to double-tap the app's top bar. Instinctively, this should probably require a single tap. Perhaps the addition of a small in-app gestures tutorial would be helpful here?

PRJCT would seem to be suited to its main purpose, but could benefit from just a little more refinement.