Airtable: the spreadsheet of the future
As our work evolve, it is important more than ever to be able to organize data in a meaningful way that allows us to see the big picture, but also to focus on details if need be. And while there are a lot of tools that try to let us have the full grasp on this data, they usually fail at compromising between ease of use and flexibility.
Airtable, however, seems to have done it. It’s not easy to describe Airtable. It’s Microsoft Excel on steroid, a MySQL database with a very intuitive user interface, or maybe a category of its own.
This piece of software is so malleable and flexible that it can be whatever you want it to: a to-do list, a content calendar, an event preparation tool, a newsletter sign-in form, … and the list goes on and on.
The UI
At first sight, the interface might leave unimpressed: it’s nothing more than a spreadsheet… or so you think. This sheet, however, has the ability to easily morph into more sophisticated forms.
All the user have to do is to specify the type of data each column will hold (a number, a photo, a list, …). A column can also hold links to other data from other parts of the sheet.