NoteBook | Who Uses NoteBook
NoteBook User Profile – Researcher
1. What is your name and occupation?
DW Wheeler, and I’m a Roboticist / Research Engineer.
2. Describe a typical day at work.
This has varied. Currently, I tend to spend most of the day coding at a computer, working on tasks that are tracked in a ticket system. I discuss my work with coworkers a couple times a day, either in person or over IM, and I attend project status meetings once a week. As needed, maybe once a month, the two to five engineers on my project will have a design meeting to agree on the details of the project we’re building.
Some days I also spend time testing my code on the robots in our lab. I spend nearly half the time in the lab in set up: cleaning the table that the robots run on, filling the CO2 canisters that power them, changing batteries, waiting for the program to load on the robot over a slow connection, etc. The other half of the time I run the robot and fix code.
3. How does NoteBook fit into your workflow?
I take meeting notes in one section of NoteBook, and I keep notes and reminders from technical discussions in another section. Part of my work involves running command-line programs with lots of arguments, and I like to keep those commands on one page so I can copy-paste them into the terminal window.
Particularly before, I would take meeting notes on a torn-out page of NoteBook, and I would constantly be flipping to other pages in the NoteBook to answer questions that came up during the meeting.
I also have separate Notebooks that I use as a one-page To-Do List. I can keep a hierarchy of different to-do items, collapse nodes I’m not using, and check things off.
4. How has NoteBook boosted your performance at work?
NoteBook makes it infinitely easier to reference notes from past meetings. Before, I kept notes as separate text files, so I had to open up several files if I wanted to scan past notes. Or, I kept notes in one long document, which quickly became unwieldy.
I have become better at quickly accessing information (very useful when being put on the spot at meetings). Rather than having to recall which file I wrote something in, and where I saved that file, I know the information is in NoteBook so I just look there.
5. What are your favorite NoteBook features?
I love being able to nest sections of the NoteBook. It makes the organizer in me happy. I also like collapsing lists on a page – it helps me focus on what’s important.
I love being able to choose the paper style. I also like picking tab colors, and placing tabs on pages I need. It’s customizable enough so that I really like the way my notebook looks, but not so customizable that I waste time playing around with silly options.
I like the way that lines connect the shapes, that they always point to the middle of the shape as you move them around on the page. It makes my diagrams look better without me wasting time fussing with them.
One of the most useful features for me is the ability to “tear out” a page. I often need to reference other pages in the notebook while taking notes on one page.
I have become better at keeping track of tasks by using a ToDo list in NoteBook. I did not use ToDo lists because they were either too high-level or they became too long. I love being able to collapse parts of my list that I don’t need to see at the moment.
As someone who likes bound notebooks, I was giddy when I heard about being able to add pages to sections. For me, that (and search) was the main selling point over my physical notebook.
6. Do you use NoteBook with any other apps?
I have used NoteBook to link to files that open in other applications. For instance, while doing a literature review, I took notes on several articles that I had as pdfs and I linked the pdfs to the page of notes. It meant I didn’t have to dig through a Finder window if I wanted to see the whole article again. I’ve done the same thing with PowerPoint presentations and even cryptically named forms in Excel – I put a phrase reminding me what was in the file on a page, linked to the file, and saved myself minutes of repeatedly opening up the wrong files until I memorized the random form numbers that they were named with.
7. How would you describe NoteBook in one sentence?
An awesome program that combines the best aesthetic qualities of a paper notebook with the ease of an electronic notebook.
