Sticky notes as a kind of design material: How sticky notes support design cognition and design collaboration

doi:10.1016/j.destud.2021.101034

Design Studies

Volume 76, September 2021, 101034

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2021.101034 Get rights and content

Highlights

•
Sticky notes serve as a ubiquitous – yet under-explored – type of design material.
•
The properties of sticky notes give rise to affordances that support design activity.
•
Sticky-note affordances support visualization of part/whole relationships in design.
•
Sticky notes support design collaboration, enabling shared attention and turn-taking.
•
The versatility of sticky notes may explain their popularity in real-world design.

Sticky notes abound as a material in design practice, yet their use is under-explored empirically and theoretically. We address the research question: how do sticky notes support design cognition and collaboration when compared to other kinds of design materials? We compare four types of design materials (sketches, prototypes, cards, sticky notes) and the activities afforded by the properties of these materials. We find that the affordances of sticky notes make them well-suited to supporting cognitive processes associated with visualizing and understanding “part/whole” relationships in concept development. Furthermore, sticky notes facilitate design collaboration by enabling shared attention through material anchors and the modulation of turn-taking. We conclude by suggesting new directions for theorizing about sticky-note usage in design.

Section snippets

The importance of design materials

The activity of designing is replete with the use of design materials that support the externalization, exploration, manipulation and development of ideas and concepts. The extensive use of sticky notes seems to suggest that they may be a special kind of design material that perhaps supports design cognition and collaborative interaction differently from other highly studied design materials (e.g., sketches, prototypes and card-based resources). To explore how sticky notes provide support for

Sticky notes as a design material

As a design material, sticky notes share their central preinventive properties (i.e., novelty, ambiguity, implicit meaningfulness, emergence, incongruity and divergence) with sketches, prototypes and card-based resources, which goes a long way towards explaining their value in design. Yet, the activities carried out with sticky notes in design differ in important ways from the other types of design materials. This suggests the need to dive into the details of how the different properties of

The specific capacity for sticky notes to support part/whole design cognition

Several design theorists have highlighted the importance of designers working back and forth between detailed design elements and whole concepts (e.g., Alexander et al., 1987; Nelson and Stolterman, 2012; Schön, 1983; Wiberg, 2014). In examining the nature of sticky notes in the previous section we have proposed that they are especially useful for affording the visual display and dynamic relatability of “parts” to conceptual “wholes” in support of design cognition. We now consider further how

The capacity for sticky notes to support design collaboration

In the previous section we have explained how sticky notes support design cognition through their capacity to facilitate a variety of cognitive processes that appear to be centrally concerned with understanding and reasoning about part/whole relationships in concept development. But what about the capacity for sticky notes to support design collaboration? Research efforts to uncover how socially-oriented creative interactions are sequentially co-constructed through the use of sticky notes have

Digital sticky notes

The popularity of the sticky note as a design material has led to many attempts at transferring sticky-note qualities into a digital context, fueled in part by the increased amount of online collaboration arising during the COVID-19 pandemic. Popular, online, sticky-note collaborative systems (e.g., Miro; Mural) and experimental research platforms such as Cards and Boards (Dalsgaard et al., 2020), aim to capitalize on many of the affordances found in physical sticky notes, often preserving

Conclusions and future directions

In this conceptual position paper, we have addressed the research question of how sticky notes support design cognition and design collaboration when compared to other kinds of design materials. In tackling this question, we first considered the importance of “design materials” in design activity, exploring the critical roles played by sketches, prototypes and card-based resources, before then engaging in a comparative examination of the role of sticky notes in design. We proposed that all four

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Innovation Fund Denmark [grant number 1311-0000B], and Independent Research Fund Denmark [grant number 8108-00031B].

References (122)

O. Atilola et al.
The effects of representation on idea generation and design fixation: A study comparing sketches and function trees
Design Studies
(2016)
L.J. Ball et al.
Analogical reasoning and mental simulation in design: Two strategies linked to uncertainty resolution
Design Studies
(2009)
L.J. Ball et al.
Advancing an understanding of design cognition and design metacognition: Progress and prospects
Design Studies
(2019)
L.J. Ball et al.
How sticky notes support cognitive and socio-cognitive processes in the generation and exploration of creative ideas
L.J. Ball et al.
Design requirements, epistemic uncertainty and solution development strategies in software design
Design Studies
(2010)
B.T. Christensen et al.
Kinds of “moving” in designing with sticky notes
Design Studies
(2021)
B.T. Christensen et al.
How do initial ideas evolve into final ones? Exploring the cognitive size, structure and life of ideas using sticky notes
B.T. Christensen et al.
The properties of sticky notes for collaborative creativity: An introduction
P. Dalsgaard et al.
A study of a digital sticky note design environment
M. Deininger et al.
Novice designers' use of prototypes in engineering design
Design Studies
(2017)

G. Dove et al.

Grouping notes through nodes: The functions of post-it notes in design team cognition

Design Studies

(2018)

A.D. Fischel et al.

A framework for sticky note information management

E. Gerber et al.

The psychological experience of prototyping

Design Studies

(2012)

G. Goldschmidt

On visual design thinking: The vis kids of architecture

Design Studies

(1994)

M. Gonçalves et al.

What inspires designers? Preferences on inspirational approaches during idea generation

Design Studies

(2014)

K. Halskov et al.

The diversity of participatory design research practice at PDC 2002–2012

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

(2015)

E. Hutchins

Material anchors for conceptual blends

Journal of Pragmatics

(2005)

D.G. Jansson et al.

Design fixation

Design Studies

(1991)

M. Kavakli et al.

Structure in idea sketching behaviour

Design Studies

(1998)

V. Kokotovich

Problem analysis and thinking tools: An empirical study of non-hierarchical mind mapping

Design Studies

(2008)

B. Matthews et al.

How to do things with notes: The embodied socio-material performativity of sticky notes

Design Studies

(2021)

M. Prats et al.

Transforming shape in design: Observations from studies of sketching

Design Studies

(2009)

A.T. Purcell et al.

Drawings and the design process: A review of protocol studies in design and other disciplines and related research in cognitive psychology

Design Studies

(1998)

O. Rakova et al.

Sticky notes against corporate hierarchies in South Korea: An ethnography of workplace collaboration and design co-creation

Design Studies

(2021)

R. Roy et al.

Card-based design tools: A review and analysis of 155 card decks for designers and designing

Design Studies

(2019)

L. Sass et al.

Materializing design: The implications of rapid prototyping in digital design

Design Studies

(2006)

D.A. Schön et al.

Kinds of seeing and their functions in designing

Design Studies

(1992)

S.A. Scrivener

The interactive manipulation of unstructured images

International Journal of Man-Machine Studies

(1982)

S. Abildgaard

Sticky ideas. A qualitative study of idea ownership during brainstorming sessions

C. Alexander et al.

(1987)

J.R. Anderson

Cognitive psychology and its implications

(1995)

B.P. Bailey et al.

DEMAIS: Designing multimedia applications with interactive storyboards

L.J. Ball et al.

Designing in the wild

Special issue of Design Studies

(2018)

M. Bernstein et al.

Information scraps: How and why information eludes our personal information management tools

ACM Transactions on Information Systems

(2008)

H. Beyer et al.

Contextual design: Defining customer-centered systems

(1998)

S. Bødker et al.

Digitizing sticky notes

T. Brown

Change by design: How design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation

(2009)

B. Buxton

Sketching user experiences. Getting the design right and the right design

(2010)

H. Casakin

Design aided by visual displays: A cognitive approach

Journal of Architectural and Planning Research

(2005)

H. Casakin et al.

How do analogizing and mental simulation influence team dynamics in innovative product design?

Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing

(2015)

P.H.-C. Cheng et al.

Scientific discovery and creative reasoning with diagrams

B.T. Christensen et al.

Fluctuating epistemic uncertainty in a design team as a metacognitive driver for creative cognitive processes

CoDesign

(2018)

B.T. Christensen et al.

The relationship between analogical distance to analogical function and pre-inventive structure: The case of engineering design

Memory & Cognition

(2007)

B.T. Christensen et al.

Putting blinkers on a blind man: Providing cognitive support for creative processes with environmental cues

A.M. Collins et al.

A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing

Psychological Review

(1975)

C. DiGiano et al.

Learning from the Post-It: Building collective intelligence through lightweight, flexible technology

A. Dix et al.

Externalisation and design

B. Due

The development of an idea in the context of rejection

Semiotica

(2014)

Cited by (17)

Kinds of ‘moving’ in designing with sticky notes
2021, Design Studies
Citation Excerpt :
The specific design method employed varies (e.g., mind-map, brainstorm, empathy map). Given the popularity and relative homogeneity of such collaborative sticky-notes-on-board design activities, it seems likely that they are experienced as supporting design progression in essential ways, where both novice and expert designers finding design value in their application (Ball et al., 2021). As a visual support tool for design, sticky note techniques deploy the graphical mapping of concepts represented as text or visual elements in order to organize information visually (Bresciani, 2019).
We explore why and how designers move sticky notes by conducting a visuospatial analysis of sticky note moves as they unfold across time in design practice. We find that individual sticky note moves have a relatively stable sequential order containing strategies for directing and maintaining shared attention. Further, three kinds of sticky note movements are found pertaining to the formation of associations, categories, and partial solution structures. Moving sticky notes provides support for conceptual design centrally through attending to the proximity between notes across time in gesture and placement. Proximity serves as a marker of associative strength and category centrality, and also plays a key role in the structural build-up of relationships between objects.
Sticky notes against corporate hierarchies in South Korea: An ethnography of workplace collaboration and design co-creation
2021, Design Studies
Citation Excerpt :
While describing cross-cultural co-design practices, design studies tend to focus on creative affordances of stickies, whereas “culture” is operationalized narrowly as stabilized behavioral patterns and values of individuals. Tracking how stickies bridge multicultural communication undoubtedly contributes to specifying variations in stickies' supportive roles in design cognition and collaboration as well as in the concrete entanglements of stickies' social and material aspects—all underexplored problems, according to Ball et al. (2021) and Matthews et al. (2021) (both this issue). But to fully grasp stickies’ social productivity in cross-cultural contexts it is necessary to also consider how they might be not simply passive materials manipulated by co-design participants shaped by ethnonational cultures but themselves agents that mediate cultural change, at least within specific workplace settings.
This article deploys ethnographic methods and actor-network theory (ANT) to investigate how sticky notes challenge the historical hierarchies of South Korean corporate culture. After sketching challenges of workplace collaboration in South Korea, we present an ethnography of a co-creation workshop at a food company. To detail how sticky notes support collaborative inquiry, we approach them as active nonhuman actors and analyze the workshop progression through the four moments of ANT's sociology of translation—problematization, intéressement, enrolment, and mobilization. We conclude that stickies enable an effective silent ideation by hushing domineering senior participants and amplifying opinions from junior and mid-career participants. Finally, implications are drawn for stickies' mediating ability in culturally specific collaborative practices.
How to do things with notes: The embodied socio-material performativity of sticky notes
2021, Design Studies
Citation Excerpt :
While this may be a different point of departure than the analyses of sticky notes that have preceded us, we share many of the same broad objectives. For example, Christensen et al. (2020) open the recent volume on the use of sticky notes in creative activities with a valuable catalogue of the physical properties of notes—their size, shape, colour, stickiness, the affordances of paper—in reviewing studies of the uses of these remarkable square pieces of paper (see also Ball et al., 2021, this issue). Our aims are not dissimilar—we are also very much interested in the uses of sticky notes and what might ultimately be said about their materiality.
This paper presents a detailed analysis of the uses of sticky notes in a range of design-oriented activities, from three different projects. The paper makes two principal contributions. First, it introduces a socio-material analytic for the study of design materials, and exemplifies this analysis with respect to video data of designers’ uses of sticky notes. Second, it illustrates how the material properties of sticky notes come to have interactional consequences in the performance of particular social actions. Four general thematic considerations emerge from this socio-material analysis of sticky notes: (1) a reappreciation of the embodiment of space, ownership and actions-with-notes; (2) the interactional history of notes; (3) the social and conceptual inertia of gestalt contextures; and (4) the unity of the social, material and conceptual in embodied design activity.
A delphi consensus checklist for assessing arts design: a case for miniature robots in a STEAM contest
2024, International Journal of Technology and Design Education
The Group Folding Effect: The Role of Collaborative Process Structuring and Social Interaction in Group Work
2024, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
Sense-making of online digital platforms as a business model reengineering in management education during the COVID-19 Pandemic through a "sociomateriality" view of technology
2023, Advanced Learning and Teaching in Higher Education in India: A Policy-technology-capacity Enabled Approach

View all citing articles on Scopus

View full text