Listhings.com – a virtual “post-it service”, that was launched in April 2009, hosts more than 100 000 sticky-notes by more than 1000 users.

The service is a masterpiece of usability and design. It is minimalistic with little functionality and no unnecessary bells and whistles. Everything you need is there. You never get the feeling of being lost in functionality or not being sure if you use all the possibilities there are.

This is quite a rare feeling with modern software and mobilephones packed with features, buttons and icons that you never use. Tigerprises talked to Martin Tajur (pictured below), the man behind listhings.com to learn how this service came into being.

When was the start of listhings.com?

Listhings.com – was launched in April 2009. But then there were no means to sign up as a registered user. You were able to just type in the address (listhings.com), and access your notes. I did not even have a Terms of Service.

The service at the moment is small and simplistic – simple to use. Do you plan to add functionality and features?

Listhings is designed as a simple service from ground up. For me, design is not a form, but functionality. A product that looks simple and has a great design but takes time to get used to is thus not a simple product.

I think constantly trying to add new features has killed many great products over the years. This means I am only going to add some bare essentials and improve the core of the product. For example, I added the ability to store notes on multiple canvases in the beginning of October and then re-wrote the part of switching between canvases few weeks ago so the page won’t flicker and refresh itself when you’re switching the canvases. Many of such things are literally invisible to a regular user. Yet it is often exactly those things that make the difference in the end. This is the “magic” that people feel.

I do have a little “cooking lab” where I play around with (and learn) all sorts of technologies that become the new features. But with every added feature, I try to bear in mind two things – make it accessible (i.e. integrate it into existing functionality as much as possible), and avoid bells and whistles (i.e. extra buttons and controls). A simple note-taking app should not be a deck of flight instruments, should it? It should have more notes than buttons and controls that control those notes.

What is the motive behind creating the service? Is it a hobby or work?

I work at United Dogs and Cats as a Creative Director. Listhings is purely my hobby project. I intend to develop Listhings as a free service to try out some of my ideas and see how they work. Like being carbon neutral – which is possible thanks to our hosting partner that takes great care of the impact they have on environment. Or keeping stuff really simple and easy, which is a very hard task for most companies and businesses.

Who is in your team?

It’s just me. But some great folks have helped me test stuff out and given me feedback. I am very thankful for that.

How did you stumble upon such an idea?

I use a Mac computer and as you might know, Macs have this nice application called Dashboard. You might also know there are sticky notes involved. The inconvenient truth is… you can’t resize those sticky notes. This is not awesome by any means. For sure, you can’t resize sticky notes in real life either. I thought I’d tear down this barrier, and decided to give it a go. It took me less than 48 hours (one rainy weekend) to develop the core of the service – from absolutely nothing until launch.

How popular is the service?

First of all, Listhings is available for all users – it does not matter whether you sign up or not. I added the ability to sign up (and log in) just about 6 weeks ago. Over those weeks, a bit more than 1,000 users have signed up. I expect that number to double by the end of November. Most users are from United States, also from Brazil. I’m glad I’ve managed to develop something simple and useful, and that people use it and like it.

How many sticky notes are currently in the system now?

There are more than 100,000 sticky notes in Listhings servers. In a typical Post-it package there are 100 sheets. This means 1000 packs of Post-its have not been bought thanks to Listhings. I also did some calculations and found out these 1000 packs would weigh about 28 kg.

Should the people of post-it be afraid?

I don’t see Post-it as a competitor because of a different medium. It’s somewhat the same with printed newspapers versus blogs and online media. But as a web app, Listhings has many advantages over Post-it notes. Like the fact that you can retrieve your notes from any computer that’s connected to the internet.

How can your users be sure that your service does not disappear together with all the notes?

How can you be sure your Gmail account does not disappear together with all your emails? Of course I am not Google but I have made myself clear I have a duty to keep Listhings running. A great web app is not just a site with logo and a slogan but also a set of promises made and kept over time. I plan to keep it up and running (i.e. not close it down), and improve it, making it a green, fast and drop-dead-simple app for note-taking.

Who do you consider to be your competition? Is MS Outlook with its Notes features an opponent?

The main competitors are web-based note taking apps. Most desktop-based applications for note-taking (like MS Outlook Notes) are local – you can only retrieve the notes from the computer you stored the notes from in the first place. There are some other web-based note taking applications out there, but I don’t like any of them enough to start using them on a daily basis. If one finds oneself in such a situation and happens to be a person with a required skill-set to build a better product, great things happen.