Which brings me to my first and most important point: each of us organizes things differently because our brains are organized differently. Due to our unique combination of genetics, personality, and experience, we all see, store, and remember the world differently from each other. You thought there was one world “out there?” Well, I’m here to tell you, there are multiple worlds, and they are all “in here,” inside each of our minds and the way we interpret experience to create what we think of as “real.”

That makes creating a single method for organizing that works for everyone a nearly impossible task. Even more challenging is the fact that our individual organizing needs and styles change from day to day and moment to moment based on things like our mood (I’m having a bad day, so I should do things that will help me feel better), or location (I’m on-site with the creative team, so a picture might be worth a thousand words) or content (how do I help this engineering team see the forest in addition to the trees?).

With the advent of the iPhone, I thought I would finally have an electronic organizer that could replace the paper I habitually carry around with me to organize my day and week. After all, the key features I needed were 1) something I could write on that was small enough to fit in my pocket and 2) something I was sure to have with me when I needed it.

It turns out that the iPhone has a variety of options for keeping lists of things, some of which let you prioritize, set due dates, etc. I’ve used the very simple Notes application that comes with the phone as well as Jott (which has the very satisfying feature of swiping across an item to draw a line through it and mark it off the list) and OmniFocus, which is based on Getting Things Done and includes optional due dates, photos, and voice recordings.

The shortfall of these applications as compared to a good old piece of paper is this: they all assume that one method of organizing works all the time. Their well thought out structures require me to fit my thoughts and priorities into a predetermined organization that may be great for some things and terrible for others. I’ve been around enough to know how I think best in different circumstances. When I have to change the way I think to use a tool that is supposed to help me organize my thoughts, it’s no longer a good fit.

A blank sheet of paper, on the other hand, is an inviting space that asks me the question: how do you want to organize your day? It remembers what I write down, what I cross off, what I connect to another thought or action or picture. It has no issue when I decide half way through my day that there’s a better way to organize for the week. It works with me so I can change how I think based on changing priorities, moods, and circumstances.

The software I’ve used that comes closest to the flexibility of paper is probably Microsoft OneNote. OmniGraffle, MindMeister, and MindManager are also good for certain kinds of thinking. None are available in a mobile version yet. I keep hoping that Apple or an iPhone developer will fill this gap with an organizing app that flexes with my thought process.

I continue to experiment with electronic organizing apps because I like some of the things they do well. But when I’m serious about organizing my day and week, I pull out my pad of paper and get down to business.

If you have used other tools or methods that work well for you, drop me a line, I’d love to hear about them.

Epilogue:

Other organizing / thinking / planning tools that I and others have found useful include:

SmartSheet
Microsoft Excel
Google Docs & Spreadsheets

I must admit, there were several motivating factors that helped me make the decision to purchase an iPhone at this time — I don’t usually purchase 1.0 versions of any physical product at this price point. First, I already use Apple hardware and software to organize my life — the calendar, email, web browser, and iTunes media organizer included in MacOS X. That makes the iPhone the first device to be fully compatible with my digital world. Previous smart phones, such as the Blackberry and the Treo, require third-party software to synchronize with a Mac, and the results are somewhat mixed. Second, my partner Tracy was in need of a new cell phone, so I had the excuse of buying an iPhone and passing my old phone to her (this also helped me bypass the “early termination fee” when moving from Verizon to AT&T). Third, my iPod’s screen has been on the fritz for several months. It’s basically unreadable and I use it only as an alarm clock, since those settings were already in place before the screen went out. If these elements had not been in place, I may have chosen to wait until next January when a second iteration of iPhone hardware may be announced.

The verdict?
For me, the iPhone is working as advertised. Synchronizing with my computer is as easy as plugging it in and letting iTunes do the work. The battery lasts all day, even with significant use of all features. I can add new calendar events to the phone while out and about, check and reply to email, take notes, and check the weather. The web browsing experience is amazing for the screen size. The touch screen keyboard took about 3 days to get used to, but now I’m typing on it at about 75% of my full-keyboard typing speed. In short, this thing just works.

That’s not to say it’s perfect. Others have identified several shortcomings and the AT&T network has been oddly missing in some critical places (near the Seattle airport, for example). I’m sure that Apple and AT&T teams are watching closely the initial experiences of early adopters in order to improve that experience in the coming months.

My favorite feature of the iPhone has to do with its architecture — it works as a phone, but it thinks like a modern computer, meaning it can do multiple things at one time. While on a call, it’s easy to look up a phone number or address. If you are near a WIFI network, you can even look up information on the web to relay to the person on the other end of the phone. Yesterday afternoon I was working at a remote site when I received a call asking if I wanted to go to the movies. I switched to speaker phone, opened the web browser, and did a Google search for “Ratatouille near 98103″ – then relayed that information to my friend (the movie was ok, but not as good as I wanted it to be). This multi-tasking ability is absent in most cell phones, and it’s really the key ingredient that changes a “phone” into a “communications and entertainment” device.

Since the phone is based on Apple’s MacOS X operating system, there’s a tremendous ability to improve the user experience without changing the hardware at all. I expect this to be the first cell phone I’ve owned that will actually get better over time without a hardware upgrade.

I’ll end with a list of software-only changes that would significantly improve the iPhone experience.

Things I the iPhone Could Do with a Software Update
As a user experience designer, here are the things I hope Apple will update in the iPhone’s software over the coming months to make current generation iPhones even better:

1. Sync with my computer automatically over a wi-fi network (right now a cable is required)
2. Sync To Do Lists from Address Book
3. Copy/Paste
4. Add Flash player to Safari on the iPhone (web sites made with Flash technology don’t work today)
5. Voice commands for making calls hands-free (a feature present on most modern cell phones)
6. Vocal directions for Google Maps (avoid the danger of looking at the screen while driving)
7. Allow developers to make iPhone widgets (I’d like a flight status widget for example)
8. View Notes and Email in landscape orientation (only web browsing currently works in landscape)
9. One-touch email to “me” for Notes, Pictures, Maps
10. Send calendar invitations via email
11. Send contact info via email (find a contact, click to send that info to a 3rd party)
12. Show multiple calendars with different colors and options to display selected calendars only
13. Bluetooth tether — connect a laptop wirelessly to the phone for remote internet access
14. Create new email folders from the phone for organizing messages
15. Email rules – add ability to filter and organize email coming to the phone (see my previous post about using gMail to do this on the server before it gets to your iPhone or in-box)

Since music has become all-pervasive in our culture, in many ways it has moved into the background. It comes out of walls and sidewalks as we walk down city streets, iPods, cell phones, car stereos and even elevators. Since we are surrounded by music in so many ways, fewer people take time to make music themselves.

Tod Machover wants that to change. He and his team at the MIT Media Lab have created software that makes it possible for anyone to create music. It’s called Hyperscore.

Hyperscore is music composition software that re-imagines what is required to compose original music. It provides instant access to playing creatively within a highly structured medium. The fundamentals of melody, harmony, rhythm, key changes and timing are click-and drag simple. Instead of notes on a staff, there is a palette where you can paint instruments into a melody and drum beats into a rhythm. The harmony palette then provides a place to arrange your melodies and rhythms into a composition. Drag a melody up to hear it walk up the scale as it plays. Drag the harmony line down to change keys at a particular point in the piece.

It takes less than 5 minutes to learn and then you’re off and running with the potential to create everything from simple riffs to full-length symphonies. When you’re finished, you can output your composition in standard musical notation so it can be played by other musicians. In fact, MIT has partnered with school systems to create programs where children compose original music that is later played by a symphony orchestra.

Besides the fact that Hyperscore is tremendously fun to play with, I am impressed with how Machover and his team focused on engaging creativity rather than learning the details of the craft. To accomplish this feat, they use technology to hide the complexity of the traditional composition medium while bringing its fundamental forms to the surface. This is a fantastic design challenge. Wouldn’t it be fabulous if more technologists took this approach to design?

What if organizations and teams applied the same concepts to their design challenges – including products, processes and projects? How would that work?

They might start by asking questions like these:

• What do our users/customers/stakeholders care about? What excites and inspires them?
• What are the minimum conditions that will maximize creative engagement?
• How can the results of creativity be shared easily and broadly?
• What are the fundamental forms of the product / process / medium we’re working with?
• What happens when we remove everything that’s non-essential?

What other questions do you think would be valuable?

Accessing creativity in a person is accessing an energy that goes deep into their being. It’s a way to touch the spark or life force that drives action and innovation. From that place we are willing to learn whatever we need to learn, to do whatever needs to be done. The learning and doing become fuel that drives our creativity. Fill ‘er up!

(One way to learn more about engaging creativity in organizations is to attend the Nexus for Change conference in March.)

Tags: changehandbook, nexusforchange, adaptiveorganizations, creativity,