Resham Khanna San Francisco, CA

Ducks in a Row

Cross a task off your list and a rubber duck plops into the bathtub. Clear enough of them and you have, at last, got your ducks in a row. I call it “a very serious bathtub to help you stop ducking around.”

You can open and try the project in a new tab.

Launch

Tub

The bathtub sits next to your list. Check off a task and a rubber duck is added to the water. As you finish more, the ducks form a slow conga line, so you finally get your ducks in a row.

The Ducks in a Row screen: a to-do list on the left and a bathtub of rubber ducks on the right

The list itself:

  • Type a task into the field at the bottom to add it.
  • Check a task off and it crosses out, and a duck spawns in the tub.
  • Hover a task to delete it.
A close view of the to-do list, with finished tasks crossed out and two still to do

Ducks

There are 20 ducks to collect, and you unlock new ones as you get through tasks. Unlocked ducks show in color with a name and the date you got them. The ones you have not reached yet stay as dark silhouettes.

The duck collection case: four ducks unlocked in color with names and dates, the next few as named silhouettes, and the rest as question-mark mystery ducks

Details

A lot of the time went into small things that are easy to miss:

  • The soap is stamped with the word DUCK.
  • There are duck slippers on the bath mat.
  • Foam floats on the water and pops when you tap it.
  • The list is headed “stop ducking your responsibilities.”
A bar of soap stamped with the word DUCK Duck slippers on the bath mat Foam floating on the surface of the water

Idea

Two things gave me the idea. First was the phrase itself: friends kept asking what I was working on, and I kept saying I was getting my ducks in a row. Second was Kwak, a store that sells nothing but rubber ducks, which stuck in my head.

The Kwak store, a shop in San Francisco filled with shelves of rubber ducks

Polish

Getting it working was the first 80 percent, and it went quickly. The last 20 percent took far longer: the visual polish and the small, thoughtful details that make something feel special. That part is almost always where the real time goes.

A few of the directions I tried along the way: ducks with webbed feet, a version so glossy they looked like glass, and three duck types I made and deleted the same day.