UX Moment: Moosti - Time Tracker

In an effort to outwit my procrastination, I’ve attempted to use the Pomodoro technique (work for 25 minutes, take a 5 minute break, repeat), and have relied on online timers for this. While I haven’t given the technique serious enough consideration to judge its ultimate efficacy, I have found that the inscrutably named time tracker, Moosti (formerly pomodoro.me—I believe the recent name change is to dissociate itself from the Pomodoro technique), is a great tool because the countdown time, shown clearly on the site, is extended to the browser tab, so you can see the time remaining in a work/break session without having to switch tabs.

Although this doesn’t sound like much, when you’re doing something, it’s not ideal to have the timer docked and taking up precious real estate, especially on smaller screens. The timer could also be intrusive, as it’s bright red-orange and rather distracting, as timers are. Having the countdown as a dynamic page title is a great way for the user to be able to glance quickly to be reminded of its presence without having to actually look at the site and possibly lose focus, undermining the whole point of using the time tracker.

This would also be useful for autoplaying content on music streaming services of Songza’s ilk, as I find myself going out of my way, furiously navigating tabs to check the title of a song when I use Songza—a testament to its algorithmic capabilities for sure, but something like this would still be a great touch!

EDIT: Luckily, it appears Songza’s way ahead of me on that last point!