Use Notetaking to Enhance Your Creative Process

When you think of creativity, record keeping doesn’t jump to the top of your mind as a major part of the process, but it is. Keeping good notes is essential to turning your random ideas into concrete initiatives.

Why

Let’s start with the why. There are some basic reasons why notetaking is useful in the creative process.

• Remember why decisions were made: Often, tasks get put on hold or team members shift during a project. Having good notes helps the team get back on track and move forward, knowing why a project took the turns it did.
• Create clear action steps: You can have the best brainstorming meeting ever, but if no one takes action at the end of it, all that work is lost. Notetaking can help you assign tasks and notify responsible parties of their to-do lists.
• Get team members up to speed: If you add a team member or someone goes on vacation during a project, notes are a great way to help them know what has happened in their absence. If you can distill the highlights, they can get up to speed quickly.
• Share research: When we do ideation sessions, surveys, or focus groups as part of the creative process, it is helpful to hear direct quotes from participants. Having documentation of those words allows us to pull out relevant, authentic data that will move the needle with audiences.
• Store ideas for future use: Many brainstorming ideas sound amazing but they’re not necessarily right for the project at hand. A backlog of great ideas could come in handy for a different project. If you keep them at the ready, you’ve made your next brainstorming session that much more productive.

How

There are many approaches to record keeping, and there is no one right way to do it. Choose the method that works best for the space you are using and the team you have.

Handwritten

Let’s start with an old-school method. Handwritten notes can be done quickly and without a lot of extra technology. Research shows that taking notes by hand is one of the best ways to engage your brain and you learn more by using a pen than typing.

You can always use a simple notebook, but if you use a whiteboard or large Post-it notes, you can bring the whole team into the process. Participants can see what they’ve contributed and feel heard. You can also have multiple notetakers if someone wants to add to an idea.

At the end of your session, be sure to type up or photograph all the notes to keep for future reference

Shared electronic workspace

Online workspaces allow for remote and non-synchronous participation. We use Conceptboard for this task, but there are many options including Miro, Lucidchart, Zoom Whiteboard, and more. These tools allow you to set up a framework ahead of a meeting but add to it in real time. As we all know, brainstorming is most effective if you can add to and improve ideas.

The shared space lives online, so it can be revisited by all team members as needed going forward.

Transcription

Sometimes, you want an exact transcription of your session so you can pull out direct quotes or let other team members view the record without bias. You can record sessions and transcribe them via Zoom or Teams with a few simple settings changes.

Be sure to let your participants know they are being recorded, and their words are being transcribed so they can give permission.

AI

AI tools can be a big help in summarizing a meeting and listing out key takeaways. Be careful to double-check the work they do to make sure the right voices are heard by the tool. There is nuance in language and tone that you can understand as a human being that AI isn’t able to master yet.

However you choose to keep a record of your work, you will find it helps move the creative process along in a way that garners real results.