Tree of Ideas is a realtime Post-it brainstorm recorder & visualizer.
Nowadays, people use Post-its to jot down simple thoughts and move them around to combine and separate clusters to come up with ideas. However, the biggest issue of this method is the difficultly of documenting the ideation process.
The “Tree of Ideas” addresses this idea by using Post-its with RFID tags to digitally record and visualize the brainstorm process. First of all, when people jot down ideas, the handwriting is transmitted and recorded on a computer realtime. This handwriting is then annotated with a timestamp and a unique ID. When people move around the Post-its on the specialized board with a projector and RFID sensors, the system automatically detects the clusters based on the proximity between each note, and creates groups. At the same time, the system projects a “tree form” visualization behind the notes. Finally, each time the user adds new notes, or changes the position, it saves a snapshot of the previous status. After the brainstorming is over, people would be able to refer to the digital notes, and look back at the process to have further discussions.
By using this system, people would be able to easily document the ideation process, without any additional burden of taking photos of the board of notes or manually recording what is being discussed.