sexy new graphic. I made it all by myself.

I drew this:

This graphic shows the design process, and how it should be centered around the end users. I am interested in the blue parts - the fun little methods you can use to make sure the users are considered all the way through. I loved drawing this. I think all my papers are going to include illustrations. :)

I went to a great lecture this week. Totally unrelated to my research, but so great. David Gissen, a text-based artist. He showed three projects where he took an original "text" and recreated it through the fuzzy lens of environment. Sounds weird? One project he showed is where he took an old transcription of the bible, that would have been read before there was electricity. Through some sort of analysis there is a way to figure out which letters are miss-read as other letters, when seen under flickering candlelight. He then wrote an algorithm that re-wrote the main text with these miss-read letters. When you read the resulting text it at first looks like gibberish, but after a while your eyes adjust and it is very much like reading under candle light. I really like that project.

Anyways, another awesome discovery this past week has been how I can use Evernote and Mendeley combined for research projects. This has me so excited.

This is my sickly sweet process for you nerds:

I first look up a topic on Mendely that I am researching, and use google scholar and the university library to locate PDF's of relevant papers. I then save the papers on my computer, and create a "notebook" in Evernote specifically on the topic. In Evernote I create a separate note for each PDF and link them up.. 



Evernote (the premium version) has a great "annotate a PDF" function where I can highlight the heck out of papers, with little arrows or notes to show important info. Then Evernote gives me a sweet summary of the highlighted bits, so I can go back and easily go over multiple papers and remember what I read.



I then use that final note-book list to generate a sweet little bibliography and citations in Mendeley. This has made my whole life as a researcher one thousand times better. I am not printing out hundreds of papers and I feel I am actually reading and referencing appropriate content so much faster. :)

Of course they can improve, but this is such a huge leap forward...

"Gee, thanks Human-Computer Interaction theory for helping software designers develop amazing tools that actually really help me and are intuitive to learn." :)



Links

David Gissen
http://davidgissen.org/

Evernote
https://evernote.com/

Mendeley
https://www.mendeley.com/