Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
The Best of Both Worlds: How to Integrate Paper and Digital Notes (1st of 3 seminars)
Summary
Unlock the cognitive benefits of handwriting without losing the convenience of digital organization. Research consistently demonstrates the cognitive value of writing notes by hand. However, there are important benefits to keeping notes digitally. In this seminar by Duly Noted author Jorge Arango, you’ll learn workflows for integrating handwritten notes into your digital notes. Watch Part 2 Watch Part 3
Key Insights
-
•
Note-taking serves different distinct use cases such as prosthetic memory, creative thinking, reading annotation, and lecture capturing, each requiring different approaches.
-
•
The extended mind hypothesis shows notes and external tools extend cognitive capacity beyond the brain itself.
-
•
Handwritten notes facilitate deeper flow states and better initial comprehension due to slower writing reducing verbatim capture.
-
•
Paper notes are resilient, immediate, and long-lasting physically but hard to organize, search, and copy at scale.
-
•
Digital notes offer superior searchability, organization via tags and links, multimodality, and easy backups, but require more setup and learning.
-
•
Combining handwritten and digital notes leverages the immediacy and flow benefits of paper with digital organization and findability.
-
•
Mobile scanning apps like Scanner Pro greatly speed up digitizing handwritten notes with OCR and cloud integration.
-
•
Using a central digital repository (Obsidian) to store and link all notes, including PDFs of handwritten ones, creates a powerful, emergent graph of knowledge.
-
•
Tagging should focus on utility and minimalism, like tagging by projects rather than exhaustively describing topics.
-
•
Beware of over-optimizing note-taking systems; the goal is to enhance effective thinking and work, not just perfect note management.
Notable Quotes
"Note-taking is really important; it's underappreciated but critically important, like interviewing users for a researcher."
"Notes are a way to enhance our thinking, serving different purposes from memory aids to generative creative work."
"We think with things; our brain is part of us but we extend our cognition into our environments and tools."
"Handwritten notes have no boot up time, and that immediacy helps enter deeper flow states."
"People who took notes by hand tend to have better recall than those typing notes because they process information differently."
"Digital notes can be linked to each other to create a graph of ideas that is impossible with linear paper notebooks."
"Scanner Pro automatically corrects perspective and applies filters, making scanning with a phone fast and high quality."
"I resist premature optimization of tagging and structure; I want to be 80% there rather than perfect and distracted."
"The goal is not to take notes; the goal is to think effectively, as Andy Matus says."
"Avoid getting sidetracked by tools and processes so you can focus on the actual work those notes help enable."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"The journey we are on is to change and advance not just practices but the entire research field."
Jemma AhmedTheme 2 Intro
March 10, 2022
"What's weak feedback? Vague, off target, or late stuff like make it pop or opinions with no owner or next step."
Vanessa VarinFeedback: The Other F-Word
September 10, 2025
"The double empathy problem: neither neurotypicals nor neurodivergents see each other’s empathy as empathy."
Cassini Nazir Meah LinThe Dangers of Empathy: Toward More Responsible Design Research
March 27, 2023
"Accessibility is a better sell than sustainability when engaging clients."
Ned Gartside Mike Gifford Zoe Lopez-Latorre Tzviya SiegmanNavigating accessibility and climate
April 17, 2024
"It's not just about the artifacts but the conversations had to come to that system or structure."
Noreen Whysel Katie SaindonShort Take #4: UX/Product Lessons from Your Industry Peers
December 6, 2022
"An agent is a model using tools in a loop, making plans, reasoning, and calling tools until it’s done."
Peter Van DijckBuilding impactful AI products for design and product leaders, Part 3: Understand AI architectures: RAG, Agents, Oh My!
July 30, 2025
"Black women are diverse; no two Black women are alike, which presents opportunities to innovate inclusive technology."
Yolanda RankinBlack Feminist Epistemology as a Critical Framework for Equitable Design
March 11, 2021
"Having conversations with stakeholders before presenting AI-generated recommendations helps validate and refine them."
Fisayo Osilaja[Demo] The AI edge: From researcher to strategist
June 4, 2024
"I don’t know what needs fixing until we listen, observe, and apply research to the organization."
Jose CoronadoFrom Zero to Hero
September 8, 2022
