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Testing Out the Post-it Plus App

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11.28.14 | By
Testing Out the Post-it Plus App

When the Post-it® Brand announced their new Post-it Plus App last month, we couldn’t help but be intrigued and excited about how we could use it. Having been a project manager in my “previous life” for 10 years, I know how important it can be to be able to collaborate with your team members outside of the office, remotely at home, while traveling and even without a computer. This app can certainly come in handy for anyone who works on a team or collaborates on projects with lots of moving parts. What also excites me is that Post-it Brand just released an update for iOS 8 that offers the ability to create digital Post-it Notes within the app so that you can quickly add new ideas to your board anytime, anywhere, even after the meeting ends. I wondered how we could test it out here at Design Milk, so I decided that we’d take one week of our digital editorial calendar and turn it into a fun, collaborative Post-it Plus App board project.

This is how our weekly editorial calendar typically looks:

Editorial calendar - one week of posts

Editorial calendar – one week of posts

post-it-wall

I recreated the ideal weekly editorial calendar and color-coded everything using Post-it Notes and then used the Post-it Plus App’s built-in camera to capture the entire calendar at once. As soon as it took a snapshot, it created digital Post-it Notes of each one of my physical Post-it Notes—color-coded and all! It even tells you if you need to be closer to fully capture everything accurately. Smart!

snapping-a-pic

Digital Post-it Note editorial calendar

Digital Post-it Note editorial calendar

It was pretty cool how easily and clearly it recognizes the information!

Analog vs digital Post-it Notes

Analog vs digital Post-it Notes

Once I had the calendar created in a “Board” I was able to then create separate groups of Post-it Notes outside of the Editorial Calendar group to organize additional possible posts that might be published during this particular week.

Since I typically work closely with Caroline on the editorial calendar, I exported the calendar board into a special Post-it Plus App file and sent it to her via email so she could open it in the app on her phone. I also sent it to Gregory. They both began to add Post-it Notes to our board that represented potential articles for publication for that week.

Although we always start with an “ideal” week, all weeks are different and our schedule can change at the last minute. It’s great to be able to change it on the fly and then notify a colleague that it changed.

Editorial calendar with new posts imported into groups

Editorial calendar with new posts imported into groups

Also, being able to create separate groups outside of the calendar group enabled us to save old Post-it Notes in case we needed to change things around again, and also create groups for articles that we wanted to publish, but haven’t yet scheduled.

Moving specific articles into slots for publication

Moving specific articles into slots for publication

It was really easy to drag and drop the digital Post-it Notes on top of one another to create new groups, just like creating iPhone app groups on your phone. As new posts were moved onto the board, we were able to move things around and schedule specific articles into time slots.

Calendar group with specific posts in their scheduled time slots

Calendar group with specific posts in their scheduled time slots

We had a lot of fun with the App and I think we’ve discovered an alternative way to create special project workflows and also future brainstorming methods that can keep us talking as a group while away from our computers or traveling.

Another feature that I really liked was the ability to export as an image, PDF, Excel file or PowerPoint and then even send to Dropbox—there’s always going to be a need to send something to someone outside of your team, and it’s much cleaner to send a professional PDF or Excel file than a phone screenshot.

Create a digital Post-it Note with the phone's keyboard or draw it with your finger.

Create a digital Post-it Note with the phone’s keyboard or draw it with your finger.

On a daily basis, not only do we need to move things around all the time, but we typically change generic titles to specific post names in order to finalize scheduling. The new Post-it Note creation feature would be crucial to maintaining our digital editorial calendar once it’s been uploaded to the App. You also have the option of upgrading to the Editors Pack so you can edit, erase and create notes in your favorite Post-it® Note color. In the future, I’d love to see real-time collaboration.

screenshot-export-post-it-app

While this app encourages collaboration, I can definitely see myself using it on my own, too, whether creating a schedule for myself or when brainstorming a new idea for Design Milk. While I’ll never give up my paper Post-it Notes, the Post-it Plus App adds a new level of fun to the process!

Download the Post-it Plus App for free from the Apple App store by visiting post-it.com/plusapp and learn more by visiting post-it.com/app.

Jaime Derringer, Founder + Executive Editor of Design Milk, is a Jersey girl living in SoCal. She dreams about funky, artistic jewelry + having enough free time to enjoy some of her favorite things—running, reading, making music, and drawing.