Comments on: A sample of about a year-and-a-half’s worth of my research notes, going back in time through 117 photos. The full series would go through about 35 or more notebooks, and about 15 years.

By: changizi

changizi — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 02:06:46 +0000

My next book proposal! (You do agent work?)

By: Thea Boodhoo (@tharkibo)

Thea Boodhoo (@tharkibo) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 21:17:53 +0000

The actual content would have much less impact than the treat of getting to see the guts of the process. Just knowing that these notebooks exist and getting to see how real and human they are is both enlightening and inspiring. I would be pretty thrilled to see a collection of these pages from many different scientists curated into one book, actually. Are the notes a physicist makes different from the notes an anthropologist makes? Do they doodle in the margins? Do they use inappropriate language? Do they spell things wrong and then cross them out and spell them again? I’m so sold on this.

By: changizi

changizi — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:54:43 +0000

“Do the people who hire you not care about your problem solving process?”

Nah, not really. Now, there *are* scientists who *do* study the creative process, and might like a gander. And students also might like a gander, although I’m really not sure how much they’d get from looking at it, other than to say, “Woah, this guy writes down loads of nonsense! Maybe I should too!”

By: Thea Boodhoo (@tharkibo)

Thea Boodhoo (@tharkibo) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:21:26 +0000

Actually. Forget the jobs and the funding. Anything that can demystify science to the general population will encourage more people to do it and fewer people to fear it. Bring out your messy notebooks, scientists! I would *love* to see a book of these.

By: Thea Boodhoo (@tharkibo)

Thea Boodhoo (@tharkibo) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:14:54 +0000

It’s incredible to me that the same things that are glorified in the fields of design are thought of as “embarrassing” in science. Sharing a notebook like this in your portfolio could help you land a high-paying job as a designer – but in science…? Do the people who hire you not care about your problem solving process?

By: changizi

changizi — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 20:30:48 +0000

I tend to be fairly serial, and get one finished before starting seriously on the next. But, I did have to create a “meta notebook” with the “best of” ideas from the linear chain of other notebooks.

By: Paula

Paula — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 19:36:35 +0000

I love this. As a designer who keeps sketchbooks, I love looking through other people’s in order to get ideas on how to go about organizing mine.

What do you do when you have ideas for various projects? Do you dedicate one notebook to one project? We they all just spread out across the notebook? Do you use indices?

By: changizi

changizi — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:57:38 +0000

Oh, and the multiple columns (whether 2 or 4) helps me put more on each page, so that I can see more at any given time. Helps me think.

By: changizi

changizi — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 23:00:38 +0000

Yeah, having it hand-written helps keep the ideas flowing with no regard to how stupid they seem to be!

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 21:58:43 +0000

Thank you. This is interesting to me. I noticed you switched the number of columns you were dividing the page into. Why? What are your thoughts on an electronic format for notes? The numerous diagrams could be a real problem, but having it searchable would be nice.