We are often asked what the difference is between Wiznotes and other note taking software. There are several note taking products that allow the user to store information digitally (typed notes, pictures, audio, links to files, links to websites etc.) and then view that information at a later date. However, most of these products are clearly built using feature orientated design. ‘Feature orientated design’ means that it was designed to have various features in order to encourage people to buy the product.
Wiznotes, on the other hand was developed using goal orientated design with the objective that the users should be successful in their studies. ‘Goal orientated design’ is a design process that is used to build products that help the user to achieve whatever goals she needs to use the product for. When you compare the features in Wiznotes to the features in other note taking software, you will be able to see this difference in approach to the way the products were designed and built.
Just to make the point clear, consider the following: If you were to be asked to build note taking software for students, what features would you include? It is quite obvious that such a product should allow students to mark important points in their notes and then be able to quickly find those points when they want to revise. In addition students should be able to add various comments to their notes that should be quickly available if they want to see them, but not to get in the way when they come to revise their notes. We have gone to great lengths to implement both of these features in Wiznotes in (what we believe) are the best ways possible. If you look at some other note taking software, with a few of them users can either highlight text or add ‘Tags’ to paragraphs. When students need to revise, they will either have to go from page to page and scroll through their notes to visually find what they have highlighted, or view an alphabetically ordered list of the first few words of paragraphs that they have tagged. Those products can definitely put a tick in their list of feature check boxes for containing highlighting and tagging. However, these features are clearly not implemented in ways to help students with their goals.
Students’ success is still very much dependant on their performance in exams. The level of efficiency and effectiveness of a student reviewing/revising has a very big influence on how well she achieves in her exams. When it comes to reviewing/revising most note taking software provides the users with few benefits over notes taken with pen and paper. Wiznotes is unique in its review/revision features. Any student who decides that they are going to knuckle down and try to succeed in their exams will find revising with Wiznotes a euphoric experience.
The way I would explain the difference between Wiznotes and other note taking software to a teacher is to compare a historian to a history teacher. Superficially there may not appear to be so much difference between them, the historian might even be more knowledgeable than the teacher. However, I am sure that most schools would prefer to employ the teacher than the historian because the teacher’s goal and focus is to make sure that the students learn history.