KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 1 — Task-manager apps are nothing new, but Berlin-based company 6Wunderkinder seems to have an elegant knack for getting it right. The company first made its name through Wunderlist, which quickly became a favourite among iOS and Android users thanks to its intuitive design and minimal feel, without sacrificing functionality.

So how does one make something as simple as a task-managing application better? In November last year, the company released Wunderkit into beta mode, which incorporates the functionality of Wunderlist, and adds on a new social layer to enable more collaboration and serendipitous discovery of work projects.

“It’s a little bit Facebook, a little bit Twitter and a totally new way to do productivity and to work,” said 6Wunderkinder CEO and founder Christian Reber in an interview with ABCNews. The application — which is only Web-based, and is invite-only for now — will soon have its public launch within the next few months, but we had a chance to test out the app over the past week.

How it works

After signing into the service using your e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter, users are presented with a homepage that displays a tutorial video, and the social features of the app — including an activity stream similar to the Facebook News Feed, as well as other Wunderkit users to follow, similar to Twitter.

The task-managing side of Wunderkit is a breeze to work with. On the left-hand panel, users are given the option to create a new Workspace, after which they would be able to set the Workspace to a public or private setting (more on that later). In each Workspace, you can add in detailed tasks, draft notes, and track the overall progress of the work being done.

While similar to Wunderlist, there is no option to sync or incorporate a pre-existing Wunderlist account into Wunderkit, but the developers said that some kind of integration is in the works.

The social layer of Wunderkit is what makes it stand out from the rest, and it’s presented in a familiar interface. Like Facebook, the focal point of the Wunderkit profile page is your Status Update and News Feed, from which you can track the updates of other people on Wunderkit you choose to follow, and have been approved to do so.

Then, there are community Workspaces that are publicly open (an option anyone can set when creating a Workspace). So if you come across a public Workspace that piques your interest, you can request to join in the Workspace, track its progress, and contribute to the project.

Among the community Workspaces that are currently active is the Wunderkit support group, which allows beta-testers to collaborate and communicate with the developers, and others within the Workspace, to iron out the kinks and other issues.

Will you use it?

Currently, users who sign up with an invite are provided with a 90-day Wunderkit Pro account, before being downgraded to a Free account (although pricing and features between the two are yet to be fully disclosed). For the short time that we’ve played around with it, there’s every reason to sign up for the service, especially if you haven’t signed up for a cloud-based task-manager app yet.

Judgement on the social features of Wunderkit — as promising as they are — would have to be reserved until it opens out to a wider user-base. Many of the community workspaces are German- and technology-based, limiting the number of Workspaces that would pique the interest of a regular English-speaking Joe.

There’s no doubt, however, that it would make a great collaborative tool for open-source projects, and we can’t wait to see the first one to come out of the woodworks.