Supercharge your research with intentional and connected note-taking

Supercharge your research with intentional and connected note-taking

How do you design digital products that people actually want? Get UX tips and insights from experts behind some of the most successful digital transformations and experiences in the world. Listen to our Insights Unlocked podcast and learn firsthand from some of the most notable names and brands in experience research. Click here to listen and subscribe on your favorite streaming platform.

Notes permeate our lives, whether you are a researcher, designer, Fortune 100 CEO, small business owner, stay-at-home parent, or aspiring college student. 

But have you ever considered how we take notes? What’s noteworthy and what isn’t? Where do we keep notes? And what’s the difference between a transient note (grocery list) and an evergreen note (insights from a customer interview)?

In this Insights Unlocked episode, UserTesting’s Lija Hogan talks with Jorge Arango, author of the new book Duly Noted: Extend Your Mind Through Connected Notes. They discuss the power of note-taking to help you be more knowledgeable and creative, both at a personal level and collaboratively with teams.

Jorge boils it down to three simple rules: 

  • Make short notes

  • Connect your notes

  • Nurture your notes

Jorge is the author of Living in Information: Responsible Design for Digital Places, co-author of Information Architecture: for the Web and Beyond, and host of The Informed Life podcast. In addition to consulting, writing, and podcasting, Jorge also teaches in the California College of the Arts graduate interaction design program.

Notes aren't just memory aids. They're thinking tools

Jorge said capturing an idea or thought in a notebook (whether paper or digital) is a part of your thinking process. 

“Thinking with paper and note-taking is a form of thinking,” he said. “Thinking doesn’t happen exclusively in the brain, and notes are a very convenient and accessible thinking mechanism. It is a way of expanding our cognitive abilities.”

If you buy into this idea that we think with things and that you're somehow thinking with your hands and brain while doing this, he said, then putting pen to paper is valuable.

Transient vs. evergreen notes

In the book, Jorge describes two basic types of notes. 

The first is transient notes such as a grocery list or a reminder to pick up the dry cleaning. While important in the moment, it isn’t necessary to keep them forever. 

The other type is evergreen notes. These could be a quote you heard in a lecture, a piece of research from a book or news article, or an insight from a customer interview. They are important to your current self, and they can be important to your future self who reads the note in a few weeks, months, or years from now.

“If you have the ability to search back or browse through the notes you've taken down, then all of a sudden you have this repository that can stick around for a while and that doesn't take up space in your bookshelves,” he said.

Note-taking versus note-making

As discussed above, not all notes are the same. Another distinction is the processes of note-taking and note-making.   

Note-taking is capturing what a customer may say in a Live Conversation; or that quote that was taken during Andy MacMillan’s keynote at THiS in Seattle last year. It’s the researcher's observation while watching a customer make a cup of coffee in a field study.

Note-making is annotating new thoughts and ideas inspired by earlier note-taking. As Jorge says in his book, “You write down what you’re thinking to make sense of your ideas.”

Listen to the full episode to hear Jorge further explain the knowledge gardens and AI’s role in note-taking.

Listen and subscribe to Insights Unlocked for more episodes.

To view or add a comment, sign in

Insights from the community

Others also viewed

Explore topics