Card-based productivity software

Posted by Andy Brice
Feb 2, 2016 at 01:36 PM

Slartibartfarst wrote:

>Thankyou for posting about your software HyperPlan. Not having come
>across it before, I took a look at your website and the short video.
>Very interesting and a rather novel approach. Redolent of the MS
>Research affinity diagramming tool - you seem to have done what they
>shoulda ought to have done with that idea and taken it to the next
>logical phase of development.

Do you mean Microsoft Stickysorter (another tool that seems to have died)? I only heard about that for the first time yesterday. Having watched a video of it, there are certainly quite a few similarities. I think the main difference is in Stickysorter the user positions the cards, and in Hyper Plan the cards are automatically positioned according to their properties. I think the Hyper Plan approach is more poweful, but I can also see where the user positioning approach could be useful - especially in the early stages of planning. I am considering adding a similar ‘free placement’ mode into Hyper Plan.

>I’m not sure whether you are doing it justice where you put it in the
>context of a “card-based approach”. That could seem a bit limited,
>compared to what you would seem to have developed so far. Nice work.

Thanks! I think its fair to call it card-based. Also I am very aware that it isn’t appropriate to ‘sell’ here, so I am doing my level best not to.

Where Hyper Plan is different is that it allows you to construct a N-dimensional space and take 2 dimensional slices through it (more if you include colors and symbols). I’m not aware of any other software that takes that approach (although surely I can’t be the only person to think of it). So there isn’t really a name for it. So I am sticking with card-based for now. Feel free to suggest a better name.

>As a CRIMPer, I usually trial PIM-related software, but, as I I don’t
>actually have need of your software as it is designed, I won’t trial it.
>However, I will keep a watch on it.

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