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A part review, part investigation into the options for digital note taking and the benefits that it offers over pen and paper.
Author: Dave Roney is a consultant at i3Works
I have always been a pen and paper note taker, its quick, easy, no need for fancy apps or gizmos and I prefer to read from a page rather than a screen. Recently though I have found myself wishing there was a better way of organising and referencing my notes than the physical notepads I have been using.
With this in mind I decide to explore the options available for electronic note taking. These options revolve around two areas, software (the applications themselves) and hardware (the tools that will work with them).
I use a laptop for work but my first thoughts were that I wanted as close to a paper noting taking experience as possible.
The tools I chose to work with were:
- IPad Air 2
- Wacom Bamboo Fineline 2 Stylus
- Paper by 53
- Bamboo paper
- GoodNotes
The stylus worked very well with the iPad, the writing sometimes came out slightly offset from the stylus nib but could be altered by changing the pen angle setting. Paper by 53 and Bamboo paper were both excellent for drawing but, for me, did not allow accurate handwriting. I eventually settled on GoodNotes which has an excellent magnified section that enabled me (once I had got used to it) to take fast handwritten notes and draw and annotate them as required.
I did consider trying a Smart Pen which transcribes everything written on paper in to digital format and send it to your computer or tablet. This is a great solution but I could not find one that worked in the way I wanted at the time. Smart Pens are constantly evolving and the choice is getting greater with some now able to use normal paper rather than the Smart Pen specific stuff which greatly increases usability and decreases costs. This is an area I feel I will investigate further in the future.
Being able to record my notes digitally enabled them to be saved and organised in a variety of different ways. This can be done in the application they are created in, which essentially turns the application into a collection of almost infinitely large note pads that allows you to cut, copy and file them, pull out pages and swap them into anywhere else you want. You are also able to export them into other formats, publish them as PDFs and email them. Short of putting reformatting the iPad (and they are backed up to the cloud anyway) it is pretty much impossible to lose them, they are automatically dated, can have keywords assigned to them and are searchable. All in all, exactly the solution I was looking for.
To make it easier or colleagues to read my notes, the application allowed me to convert my handwriting to text (if I was neat enough). I also toyed with using a Bluetooth keyboard for the iPad which essentially turned it into a mini version on a laptop. This is useful when typing a lot of text and it doesn’t create a physical barrier like a laptop does. There are also a huge number of applications that are very capable including Word, OneNote, Evernote or Notes. The downside is that it is difficult to find applications that allow a combination of keyboard and stylus to work together effectively.
Given the range of applications available most tastes and requirements can be catered for. If you take a lot of minutes, then an application like OneNote allows you to sync with other Microsoft applications such as Outlook and you can automatically pull the information from your meeting appointments in to the notes you are making.
I will continue to keep an eye out for the application that will give me the perfect combination of keyboard and stylus. It may be that the iPad pro will have something developed to answer this or I may find an app that I have overlooked. Whatever happens I will be sticking with digital note taking, I value the ease and versatility that it offers is too much to go back to the pen.
