Product Design 1 → N Frontend Human Interface Visual Design

Kōro: Kanban Uncluttered

For a long time I was looking for a kanban tool that felt light. Every one I tried started minimal and ended up bloated. Trello did. Notion did. Then I found iKanban: open source, backend-free, local-first, installable as a PWA. It did everything I wanted, but you had to fight the interface to see it. Cards were tiny, chrome was loud, and the content came second to its own container. So I redesigned it for one user, me, to use every day.

The Kōro board: six columns from Inbox to Done, plain cards and a quiet bottom bar — The board, Inbox to Done. The cards are the largest and highest-contrast thing on it.

The board before, as iKanban: a dark title bar, boxed columns and small cards — Same board, same data. The dark title bar, the boxed columns and the borders are gone; the cards got bigger.

The same board after, as Kōro: borderless columns, larger cards and quieter headers — Same board, same data. The dark title bar, the boxed columns and the borders are gone; the cards got bigger.

Most of the redesign was cutting. iKanban had a task feed that collected every to-do into one flat list: two views of the same data, and neither of them the source of truth. Cut. Dark mode meant maintaining two visual systems for a tool with an audience of one. Cut. Custom wallpapers. Behind a task board. I don't know what to tell you. Cut. Everything else faced one question: does it help you read, move or complete a card? If not, it's gone.

Moving cards between columns, then reordering a column.

Kōro's icon, a single arrow on white, in the macOS Dock between Finder and the App Store — Kōro is Japanese for route or course. One arrow on white.

I've been using it for a few months now, on and off, since the way I plan keeps drifting between tools.

Try the demo ↗
It's fully functional, though minor bugs may exist. Everything is stored locally in your browser, so clearing your browsing data clears your boards.