A tool for quick capturing and analysis of fieldwork
I haven’t posted here in ages, and I still haven’t got anything amazingly insightful to contribute due to an incredible work schedule, but I thought I’d give some props to a little tool that I’ve been making a lot of use of.
One of the big dilemmas with every design research project is balancing the design and the research. Yes, coding up all the research and analysing it in depth is the best way to get the most out of it, but often there isn’t enough time or resources and the best use is getting the designers up to speed and moving on.
And so post-it note or debrief analysis has become the modus operandi in design research. This has it’s drawbacks though. You need a bit of space to do the analysis, and you need to transfer the final results to a computer to write it up.
So, searching for something to make the most of my notes immediately post-interview, I came across Mind Node. This is a pretty simple little piece of software for making mind maps with. What I realised is that the key functions of mind mapping are pretty similar to what we’re doing with post-it notes. Capture points and then re-organise them to make sense of it all.
This software does that. You make a bunch of tree diagrams of concepts and then re-organise them to your heart’s content to make sense of it all.
Best of all, there’s an iPhone app, so you can easily capture all your notes on the train immediately post a fieldwork encounter and then simply sync to your desktop for fully digitised, legible, printable, shareable, editable fieldwork notes in what’s pretty close to a post-it note format. Whilst post-its are great for working in groups, they’re not that great if you need things to be constantly edited and worked on to get to a final result.
Like all the best tools, it’s really simple and just does one thing well. Give it a go if you find you’re needing the flexibility of post-its with the legibility and ease of digital.