Post-It

Post-it

Agnese Caglio, Jeanette Landgrebe, Trine Heinemann, Dennis Day, Johannes Wagner, and Kristian Mortensen

At the ALAPP conference in autumn 2014, the SOIL project organized a panel on Post-Its and works on a special issue of a journal to document the panel.

In design workshops and similar activities, ideas and keywords are recorded continuously on Post-Its and the small colored notes are placed visibly for others in the environment, moved around, merged and combined with other Post-Its and objects and also with other small texts on whiteboards or flipcharts. As texts are Post-Its interesting because they in themselves are no more than a keywords (‘pointers’) that refer to complex meanings and ideas that participants have formulated during the process.

But how ‘sticky’ are these complex meanings when Post-Its move around? Where do Post-Its go when the workshop or the creative process is over? An interesting example was the exercise when our current department was formed. Post-Its, yarn and other materials were put up on a bulletin board over a period. The employees’ areas of interest were successively written on the board. The passers-by could highlight network relationships and comment structure with colored pens. After a period the activity was abandoned. There had been formed a snapshot of many employees’ academic interests which was interesting, informative, and consequential. When the material was taken down these material correlates of all these networks disappeared. The material had fulfilled its creative purpose.

At the panel papers by Caglio, Landgrebe & Heinemann, Day & Wagner, and Mortensen & Brouwer were presented. A special issue, to be edited by Dennis Day & Johannes Wagner is currently being prepared.