Yesterday I taught two different workshops that took a deep dive into strategic note-taking for user research. One was for private team training and another was the Orchestrate workshop in the current Ask Like A Pro user research workshop series.

Strategic note-taking helps you right-size the information you collect and significantly expedite analysis and synthesis. The approaches can be used individually or with teams. They also help ensure that selection bias is not introduced because the notes are documented consistently ensuring that all data can (and should) be equally and thoroughly considered.

People are often blown away about:

• How many different ways there are to take notes

• That so many note-taking templates and strategies exist

• The benefits that result from employing these techniques

• Which frameworks to consider for specific methodologies and why

In both workshops I walked through variety of note-taking templates and strategies from my actual studies so the workshop participants could see how these tactics play out in real qualitative research studies. I also shared several tools and templates to inspire and help them adapt these approaches to their own practice.

Here are a few slides from the workshops. I love strategic note-taking ;) Happy to answer any questions you may have!