Ask Slashdot: Replacing Paper With Tablets For Design Meetings?

New submitter faderrider (3726665) writes I work in the healthcare design industry and our firm is looking to get away from using paper during our design meetings. My first thought was to load our reports and plans on a tablet, bring a half dozen or so tablets for attendees and somehow create a local ad hoc network that would allow them to view my desktop. A little more thinking brought me to consider the value of attendees being able to mark up documents on their own, or take control of what is being viewed to talk through ideas. Is anyone else out there doing something like this and if so what are you implementing? Specifically the challenges i see are creating the local network, establishing share/control relationships between tablets and managing any documentation markups attendees may make during the meeting. I am also looking at the Samsung 10.1 as the hardware but would be interested in any recommendations. I can also provide, most of the time, web access via my phone but would prefer not to rely on a service like WebEx or JoinMe.

Use Paper

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll waste the whole meeting fiddling with the technology and getting used to the UI. Just use paper until the design is pretty stable, then go to the computer. Better yet, use a whiteboard. That's what they are for.

Evernote + Sketch

[NitzJaaron]

As a UX / Product Designer, I've spent years and years taking down everything in notebooks, and doing collaborative design work on large-scale quadrile paper. Until about a year ago. I was getting tired of scanning in or completely re-drawing final product designs, and moved to use Evernote + Sketch to collaboratively develop & design software, websites, and products. What's nice about Evernote and Sketch is that they are 1) Integrated, 2) Work on Windows/Mac/iOS/Android, 3) Easy to use, and 4) Make sharing documents and graphics nearly instantaneous as long as everyone has network access. We've moved to doing all of our requirements and specs in Evernote, and using Sketch to get first drafts done digitally. We also scan in drawn pictures & other misc. materials to be stored in Evernote. It's a great combo & repository.

Re:Use Paper

[UnknownSoldier]

Exactly.

We've been using wheels for thousands of years and I don't see anyone complaining about that.

Use what works instead of a "solution looking for a problem."

Re:Dear God WHY?

[unrtst]

Paper doesn't scale very well. I have a repository for a project that's been going on for a few years and has a few hundred photos of whiteboards. Trying to find one is almost impossible because there's no full-text search for photos of whiteboards.

Then you (or they) are doing it wrong.
IMO, any and all meetings should have an agenda, stuff happens (notes/etc), and a follow up summary. That last part is what you appear to be missing.
Stick someone in charge of doing the wrap up.
(optional) Everyone should send their (brief) notes to that person or group at the end of the meeting.
Said person then writes up what was covered, logs the white board pictures and such (obtaining ID's or URL's in the process of doing so), and puts those in their summary doc.
FTS (full text search) will find the summary, and you can find the relevant white board pics from there.
One could also add a lot more document management stuff (just an example, but knowledgetree can work well), and add comments and tags to each individual whiteboard image.
Any text on the whiteboard could be transcribed as well and included in the summary doc and/or the image metadata.

More work? yes.
Much more work? no (most of that should already being done, else the meeting was either insubstantial or a huge waste of time... in either of those cases, the summary should be trivial to write: link to previous summary + note of "not much has changed").
Much more useful? yes.

Re:Ah no

[radarskiy]

"Also, you cant save whiteboards"

Camera.

Everyone has them in their phone now. Take pictures of the whiteboard, and the person assigned to take minutes will redraw the diagrams nicely later.