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11/17/2008

StickySorter: A Tool for Organizing Information
StickySorter Overview Diagram

StickySorter was inspired by a real problem we encountered at work: Julie’s team was conducting a large study with researchers all over the world.  They needed to sift through hundreds of research observations and organize them into groups using a process known as affinity diagramming.  Affinity diagramming typically involves a team of people gathering in a room, writing down individual ideas or observations on sticky notes, placing the notes on a wall or whiteboard, and then arranging the notes into meaningful groups.   The trouble was that the researchers on Julie’s team had already recorded their observations in Excel.  Using sticky notes would mean they would need to manually copy all their observations onto notes, and then, after completing the affinity diagram, retype the observations and groups back into Excel.  Furthermore, using sticky notes would require all the researchers on the team to be in the same room in order to participate. 

 

Julie knew her team was far from alone in their frustration.  Affinity diagramming is a process commonly used in many disciplines such as user research, product planning, and design.  Inspired by this widespread need, we developed StickySorter as a means to bring affinity diagramming—and information organization in general—into the age of digital information and distributed teams.  We developed a prototype, and after several iterations, arrived at StickySorter v1, which Julie’s team used to conduct many affinity diagramming sessions throughout their project.

 

StickySorter might have ended there, but other folks at Microsoft began hearing about the application and requesting to use it in their own projects.  Until this point, we had been working on StickySorter as a side project on evenings and weekends.  To release StickySorter to a larger audience, we knew we were going to need some help.  That’s where the good folks of Office Labs came in: they offered us support in taking StickySorter from the original v1 prototype to the more complete and polished version that you can download today.  Many thanks to Joe Coplen (Developer), Natasha Desai (Program Manager), and Nina Shih (Designer) for all their help in making that happen!

StickySorter v1 Prototype
StickySorter Today
StickySorter v1 Prototype
StickySorter Today
 

What Makes StickySorter Special?

As you probably know, there are many products out there that allow you to create virtual sticky notes; however StickySorter is quite different and unique.  We designed our application specifically for tasks that involve organizing large amounts of information.  In addition to simply creating notes, StickySorter offers the ability to:

 

·         Import and Export information in csv format, a standard format that is compatible with many other applications such as Excel and Access.

·         Create and Label Groups of notes and save that information along with the notes themselves.
Other virtual note applications allow you move notes close to one another as the only means of grouping. StickySorter goes beyond this: it stores group information as a property of the individual notes so it can be saved and used for other tasks.  It also allows you move and manipulate groups with ease.

·         Display Structured Information on a note. StickySorter allows you to create notes that have multiple fields—a title, description, and author, for example—rather than a single block of text.  Like groups, this field information is saved with the notes so it can be used for other tasks.

·         Create Custom Views of your information.  In addition to allowing you to define multiple fields on a note, StickySorter allows you to choose which fields you want to display. This is handy when you import information that has multiple fields but you only need to see a couple of them for sorting and organizing.

·         Work with Large Collections of notes.   StickySorter has a number of features that make it easier to work with large numbers of notes, including panning and zooming on an infinite canvas; tiling, cascading, and piling notes; setting note colors; searching for text within notes, and much more.

 

We’d like to thank you for checking out StickySorter, and we hope that you find it useful in your own work. In case you haven’t downloaded it yet, you can get it from the StickySorter Project Page.

 

—Sumit Basu (Researcher, Microsoft Research) and Julie Guinn (User Researcher, Microsoft Office Design Group), co-creators of StickySorter

Posted at 4:16 PM by Sumit (MS) | Category: StickySorter | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (18)

Comments

Request

Great application! But please change "delete" from ctrl-x to something else, such as the delete key.  Cut and paste habits are getting me into trouble!
Matt17 at 11/18/2008 12:49 PM

Program won't start

This program won't boot under a non-administrator.

I installed sticky sort as a user, not as an administrator.  That is because I honored Microsoft's security "innovations" with Vista and the recommendation to avoid using the administrator as a regular user.

Of course, during the installation, I was asked for administrator privileges -- and I entered all the requisite passwords.

At the end of the installation, your program came up.  But after I close the program and tried to start it again from the start menu, no icon would work.

I rather suspected this was going to happen -- I have had tons of trouble with OneNote add-ins, also developed by Microsoft.

It is obvious that if I were stupid enough to honor Microsoft's guidelines of working under a user and not as an administrator, I am also not smart enough to know what to do about this problem.

Please tell me what to do -- I would like to use this program, it is a nifty little program, I only wish it would start !!!
MsJ at 11/21/2008 6:16 AM

Drag + Drop for group change

How above move to group being a drag + drop action? (maybe Shift + drag)
 
I'd envisage a dotted line appearing connecting the note to the nearest group. When you release that note moves to that group with the placement you chose.
Mjolnir at 11/21/2008 6:29 AM

Running as non-Administrator (help for MsJ)

Hi MsJ, sorry to hear you're having installation problems!  We haven't seen this before, but here's a possible fix:  see if you can open up the folder c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Labs\StickySorter and double-click on StickySorter.exe.   If that works, there's an issue with your shortcut - the easiest thing would be to right click on StickySorter.exe, make a new shortcut, and then drag the shortcut to your desktop or Start menu. 
Sumit (MS) at 11/24/2008 1:27 PM

Suggestion - Adding Study Tool Elements?

Hi,

I have just downloaded your program and installed it onto my Vista Business OS system. The installation was a dream, ok I have over egged that statement a little, it installed ok with no dramas.

From the title you can see what my suggestion is but also could you not have it that when the "Stickies" are placed in  order that you can select the group(s), right-click and select from a menu to place a copy of the content into a Word document, Notepad document or even dare I say it OpenOffice document for the work to be expanded. This would save time having to retype things out agaoin and adding mistakes.

It is great that you can select an F-key to set the note colour but what if the colours you have provided are not what the user wants? Could I suggest that you add a link at the top of the list (when you right-click) and once you hover over it, it will bring up the Colour Palette. I hope this makes sense.

Opening this tool up to include other areas of work or study would make it more versitile and open to other groups thus making it more popular, we hope.

Regards

Othalian
Othalian at 11/28/2008 3:18 AM

Initial thoughts

I downloaded this to give it a try out and thought the Welcome screen (yes, the one that pops up when you start the install process) could use some changes.
Rather than copy paste everything I have written on my blog, I have posted the link below.
http://www.warrier.name/blogs/?p=14
sreejath at 12/3/2008 12:24 AM

How to get to the main blog page

I can't seem to get to the comments
Moto Bill at 12/5/2008 8:30 AM

images

This is great.  Is there a way to include images?
eve at 12/10/2008 8:36 AM

Nice idea

This looks like a really good idea for a way to work with data.

I work as an advisor to schools in England  and am currently reviewing our National Curriculum with regard to data handling and this will be really useful.

I've a couple of other ideas as well - for example a 'user friendly' form designer for excel.  Is this the sort of thing the labs could help with?
BobH at 2/4/2009 3:43 PM

Nice Job

This is a good idea keeping us reminded with our work.

Thanks
Fed at 2/26/2009 1:00 AM

Trainers and Faciliators

I think this programme has excellent potential but you need to think about the way trainers and faciliators work. Translating the post-it note way of working from a physical to a virtual one means you will need to create some texture in the gui interface.

That means faster drag and drop, resizing options and automatic hierachy retabulating in real time. I would like to see the ability to resize the notes, create peel off options (like the real thing) and a tablet version for wiriting in the content. The technology should not get in the way of rapid brainstorming and visualization of ideas. That also means moving away from a menu driven approach in the toolbar.
jtg123 at 4/26/2009 12:05 PM

Sticky and onenote

Great tool: Think it will be wonderful could this be integrated with onenote.
Quantum at 5/12/2009 5:27 AM

How about some feedback from the moderator

Here are some more ideas....like another earlier comment, drag and drop with a dotted line would be a better way to show relationships.

You should not make one category called group. Rather any note should be capable of becoming a group simply based on the relationships established between the notes.

I would like to hear about the development plans for the tool.
jtg123 at 5/15/2009 2:53 PM

StickySorter

I Likey !

A couple of usability items and then a bigger picture item below:
another vote for dotted lines around group, especially as you drag a note to it; is CSV the best choice - maybe xml ? (while still allowing csv import); abilty to resize notes - important!; ability to shrink all notes down to orig size and revert them to their last reiszed state; option to have a note auto expand either in width or or length to fit contents; abilty to fold a group - to reduce need for panning; shared sessions- just as in one note - where everyone leaves with a local version; fill note w an image, or do drawing/annotating in it...; allow expand on hover; when panning  and then click on a sticky, auto-revert to cursor; ability to type multiple items in one note, perhaps auto-bulleted, and then explode it into separate notes, perhaps auto-grouping them; creation&edit date/times as hidden fields;
as with excel comments - option to drop user name in at start of note;  fix odd behavior when note expands beyond size of sticky - at end of each line or upon hitting return, you are exited and jumped back to top of note

Bigger picture:
Look at freemind, xmind, mindmanager, etc. A lot of people are developing/working with over-worked mind-mapping solutions. If you added ability to move sticky groups around within tree hierarchies, you would have 90% of what folks need, in a simpler more manageable app.

With that in mind:
Please add this to OneNote ! it would effectively give OneNote the mind mapping capability that people are asking for, intentionally leaving it much simpler than dedicated mind-mapping solutions.

ability to drag/drop groups between diff levels of tree;
allow for icon on note - and/or fill patterns akin to excel, and/or more colors.

thanks
cgram at 5/15/2009 11:28 PM

Print ?

Works very well but I can't find a way to print. I'm using this for LEAN applications on site, so printing onto a plotter and placing a copy on the workshop floor would be a real boon.

Thanks
Tobermoray at 6/30/2009 7:18 AM

Re: StickySorter: A Tool for Organizing Information

Hi,

This is still a great little program which will I hope expand as time goes on. Could I suggest you add a print facility for those who may use Sticky Sorter for learning. All the stuff they need to learn could be printed out to small cardex cards to use as FlashCards and it would be even better if it lined up with the lines on the card. Just so it looks neat and tidy. And if the answers could be printed out on the other side that would be even better.

Thinking about it you could use this program for producing a thesis or project report. This could be achieved by either numbering each of the notes or placing them in a special project group and selecting to print the notes either horizontally or vertically. All the notes would be printed out filling each page unless you could right click on the note prior to printing asking for a new page to be started at that point.
Othalian at 7/26/2009 11:13 AM

Keep It Simple!

Hello & Thanks for putting together such a great & amazing tool. What a time saver. Our entire team is using this to sort out a rather complex implementation visualization.

I have read the suggestions that others have & would say that this tool is perfect as it is, because it is simple. Add all the bloat & it will be no different from a whole lot of other stuff we see.

Yes, some basic features such as printing etc. may be nice, but resizing, texture & so on will only add featuritis to this very elegant program.

Maybe a web version would be useful for online collaboration, but that should probably be a larger & a different endeavor.

Thanks again & Keep It Simple!
iSl8.com at 10/2/2009 1:46 PM

One Note

I am with Quantum on this one. Tried out Canvas for One Note earlier today and many of the feature requests above are in One Note already. Maybe StickySorter and One Note Canvas could get together and make wonderful visualisation babies :)
ModerateOsprey at 1/6/2010 11:11 AM
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