Comments on: New Job, New Behaviors

By: Miranda

Miranda — Wed, 02 May 2007 09:47:50 +0000

Hello Kim, I couldn’t resist making a comment on pencil and paper note taking. I always go for pencil and paper and feel that there is a relationship between me, the pencil and the paper that I just don’t get with a keyboard and screen. When taking notes, somehow I remember more if I’ve written them by hand and can then transcribe, organise and add to them afterwards. There is also the pleasure of writing, I like my handwriting and enjoy the physical feeling of my hand using the pencil to form flowing words. The same goes for design work - even with a stylus and pad, you just don’t get the same connection as with pencil and paper.

By: Mitomjo

Mitomjo — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 21:23:10 +0000

Actually.. I tend to use a digital voice recorder to take meeting notes, collect random thoughts, etc, and transcribe the important pieces later. I found its the easiest way for me to keep tabs on everything. Aside from that.. I create alot of Excel Spreadsheets.

By: kim

kim — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 04:00:55 +0000

Yes, I’ve read about OneNote and was disappointed that it’s not in the Mac version of Office. Reading your blog, the key for me is it’s searchable - that’s just what I’m looking for.

I’m hoping Parallels performs better than Virtual PC, but I haven’t had the need to use it just yet.

By: Mallory

Mallory — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 19:39:10 +0000

I’d say my ratio is about 20:80 in favour of digital methods. I’ve been pushing more and more towards digital notebooks since joining Habanero. We are a Microsoft-heavy firm, so I run parallels on my mac and have taken advantage of One Note (I even blogged about it recently“).

I still find that in certain settings, such as interviews, the laptop “wall” just doesn’t work - pen and paper are still best and are least intimidating for interviewees. I also still love to begin wireframing with a pen-to-paper sketching process.

By: kim

kim — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 03:27:10 +0000

Great comments all around, thanks. Yes, the act of writing is a memory trigger for me as well. I also photograph markerboards as part of my routine. I like the idea of the digital markerboards, but they seem too expensive for the number of markerboards we have in the studio. I suppose we could get just a few, but photographing them seems to work.

Sadly, I have several neglected del.icio.us accounts, I just can’t seem to integrate that extra step into my routine. I do love del.icio.us for team collaboration and distribution of links.

I’ve looked at Getting Things Done since starting at AP and was surprised by how many things they recommend that I’ve already been doing. I’ve considered looking a little deeper at 43 Folders to see if there are additional things I could incorporate, maybe I’ll take a 2nd look.

On another vein … Thinking more about the behavioral change aspect of my post … it really brings home to me how designing for tasks and features is not enough or perhaps even not the right approach. Discovering the underlying behaviors can lead to developing new services and products that might not be thought of if only working from a list of features and tasks. Todd talked about behaviors, motivations and contexts last year.

By: Vertigo

Vertigo — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 22:49:35 +0000

To gather stuff for later consumption/use I would recommend del.icio.us. The taging and searching mechanisms there allow you to make sense of your collection much better then traditional bookmarks.

As far as analog/digital capture I recently settled on a system where I scribble stuff on paper and then transcribe it to a mind map (FreeMind) later. That way I get the freedom of pancil+paper as well as the operational flexibility of a digital mind map.

The extra review also gives me a chance to organize the ideas and information I captured and re-think their sigificance, connections and so on. If it’s not worth spending a couple of minutes going through what I learned in a day then it’s most probably not worth recording anyway.

(Learned that one from a video interview of Jeff Veen by Merlin Mann (both formerly with AP)

Anyway, since you seem to be looking for ways to improve your mo I suggest you look at the Getting Things Done methodology (if you didn’t already). A good starting point is Merlins 43folders blog/wiki/forum.

By: Scott

Scott — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 16:33:19 +0000

I believe in the analog/digital combination, I would say my own process for managing projects is about 30/70%. There’s a potency to inscribing to-do lists and important ideas into my memory through the act of writing them in my notebook.

As for the conversion of analog to digital, we work a lot on whiteboards and type up the notes digitally for general distribution. The drawback of visual/whiteboard thinking to text notes is losing some of the creative essense of someone’s handwriting on the whiteboard.

Until we get hardware like these: (http://www.officetronics.com/product_info.php?item_number=306), we typically take a high-quality digital photo of all whiteboards before they get erased. If anyone has a question about what the notes mean, we can refer to the digital photo. These work well on basecamp, so anyone can see the whiteboards in perpetuity.

On a side note, the UPS commercials featuring whiteboards (http://whiteboard.ups.com/) were a great idea.

Is it that everyone is using whiteboards these days, so UPS connects well with its target demo? Or are they trying to be ‘cutting edge’ by using whiteboards?

Not to mention, that guy has the best whiteboard handwriting I’ve ever seen…

By: Bob

Bob — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 14:43:18 +0000

I’ve gone the other way, trying to be completely analog–but documenting everything with my cameraphone.

Another tip–store everything online. Much nicer when you want to share it or move it. This could be with a shared server at the company or 3rd-party apps/storage.