yc. is an award wining Melbourne based digital and branding agency, they pride themselves on the rigorous research and intelligent thinking that goes behind their design and development. It was only a mater of time before yc. launched their first product and the best way to truly understand how Hassl came about is from their launch announcement…
It has taken two and a half years in the making and it’s a pleasure to announce we’ve launched Hassl – our first yc. product.
For two and a half years we built a project management tool, fine-tuning it over time in what essentially was our alpha testing mode. Our goal was deliberately kept simple – get rid of everyday admin hassles so we could release the energies of a project manager to creative matters. What did we want? No more emails to each other, no more losing files, no more screwing up file naming and no more asking when deadlines were.
Our philosophy here at yc. is to give people creative space and purpose. What underlines that is having the time to find the good work to do the good work. And so there’s a real element of getting shit done. What we have done with Hassl is build a piece of technology that incorporates our philosophy; let’s just get the necessities done so we can focus on solving problems.
Hassl is our virtual know-it-all. A one-stop authority to streamline our processes, reflecting how we speak with clients. Its purpose is to manage everything to do with a project – from how we share files, communicate and manage deadlines.
The aim is to give people more time to have conversations with each other, their teams and clients and eliminating the nitty-gritty, administrative, red tape stuff. We’re determined to avoid the dreaded bloat. If ‘features’ become a dominant element of growth over usability, then the whole point will have been lost. It’s purposefully built with a few really good features – no unnecessary stuff. Its defining characteristic had to be minimal training and its dialogue with us needed to feel natural.
The approach to creating Hassl was to observe and problem solve. We didn’t make a wish list of features, but instead questioned the mechanics of every day work habits.