In the last years, every group had to keep a Design Journal for the Design Thinking course(s). In it, the group would document meetings by jotting down notes, making sketches, or collecting whatever physical things they came across over the course of their work. With the restrictions due to Corona (this is probably the most used phrase anywhere right now) this had to be adapted, of course. I’m very pleased to say that our digital Design Journal – apart from the sketches everyone makes in their own ways, be it journals or pads or just loose pages -, is kept in an encrypted storage hosted by Chaos Computer Club Wien (C3W). The cryptpad software itself is developed by the open-source CryptPad project. Information on CryptPad can be found on their website (link), and the instance hosted by C3W is available at pads.c3w.at. The software supports different formats, from plain text (“code”) pads through presentations and rich text pads all the way to kanban boards and whiteboards. And the drive really is a drive where you can use folders and subfolders! Pads can be set up to be password protected, it is possible to share links for one time use, and the share links can be set up to allow editing (or viewing only).

In the case of the digital Design Journal, this is what our setup looks like as of December 13, 10.25 o’clock:

We’re trying to keep the whole thing manageable by using subfolders, and we’re half successful at sticking to naming schemes. Using CryptPads on mobile devives (smartphones, tablets) is still in the works, but I’d argue it keeps us from working “on the go” too much. Quick notes and ideas can be shared with the group via Telegram, or by putting them into on our own note-taking setups (apps or paper – which reminds me that I wanted to ask the others what they use for such things).