First usable prototype for the new mnemonic medium: Shape Up

I had a good reason to read this book, so I just read the first two chapter, recorded my screen and my verbalised my stream of consciousness. I've sent you a video link by email, subject line: "PH tries Peritextual".

Peter

Finished both chapters and have the following to say about how I used it - I preferred having the pinned sidebar open - I had to learn to control my impulse to check the side-bar before I was done with the paragraph. It was difficult in the first chapter but got easier in the second. - Whenever I looked at the side-bar, I noticed myself reading *both* the prompt and the *answer* in one-go. My eyes would roll-over to the answer before they were even done processing the question. I would've liked to test myself whether I knew the answer or not. Like a mini-review. I don't know if that's the intention but I found myself wishing that the interface introduced enough friction to view the answer that I could do that. - I found myself not even considering adding new prompts other than the ones already present. I wasn't constantly thinking "what from this paragraph do I want to keep?" because "if it's not in the side-bar, is it really important."

I really like it. Here are my rough thoughts reading it: I will always click on the Orbit symbols, because I'm just curious whats behind (but I don't want to open the side bar bc I fear I'm getting overwhelmed) If I scroll down from when I clicked the prompt button, the sidebar should vanish. Ah! Just found out the side bar vanishes when you click the button again! Great! And it outomatically closes if I click on the "add 1 prompt"! Cool! Oops. Now I'm annoyed that the side-bar is closing when i click on "add 1 prompt" - I think because I wanted to have a look at the prompt following soon below. I'm now reading with the side-bar open aaand I'm closing it again, too many prompts, I was too distracted (I'm at "Who shapes") I would like it better if the area of the orbit button would be filled out by how many prompts are clicked (now it gets filled to the half, when clicking just one prompt?) reading again with the side-bar open chapter 3 - back to reading without side-bar I really like that you can rewrite questions I like having the side-bar open when the prompts are sparse and I have the urge to close it when there are too many prompts Why are the grey words with tool tips not in the prompts?

# Shape Up, Andy proto Being able to rephrase prompts is amazing! Feels like I'm really authoring, fitting it to my style. Same qualitative experience when adding my own prompts. Showing prompts in context (with answers) probably makes in-text learning easier, eroding [[Desirable difficulty]]. Feeling a little limited in not being able to export to markdown; means I'm unable to put my notes into a system that I know is reliable for a _long_ time. For some of the prompts, I feel uncertain as to why the author has chosen this phrasing. E.g: > What key constraint defined how Basecamp approached adding a calendar? This seems very specific. I'm feeling curious about this uncertainty! Would love to be able to ask questions or similar. Sometimes I notice that there's a concept or a idea sprouting from the text which I'm curious about, and which I want to hash out. It doesn't quite feel ready for a prompt, though, so I need somewhere to type. In [[$My Personal Mnemonic Medium (instance)]], text and prompts are interleaved, allowing me to think out loud and then - when I feel I reach a sufficient level of synthesis - I can write a prompt about it. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed when I'm presented with many prompts at once – e.g. at the "two tracks" section. https://imgur.com/a/eXWZej4 It makes it hard for me to figure out how the prompts relate to the text. I was surprised that prompts I hadn't selected still showed up in the review box at the end. But absolutely delighted at the skip button; makes reading feel *much* lighter. I would love to be able to edit a prompt in the review box.

Martin Bernstorff

- The Orbit interaction sidebar should be undockable from the browser window - I liked that it was added automatically as soon as I edited a prompt. - as I'm not working in software design, I changed the context of a few prompts where I saw value in my domain of interest. - Having the chapter subheading to the left of the Orbit window during review felt like cheating. - the designer - programmer partnership sounds like the artist and scientist pair. Working together makes for the magic missing when these seeming dichotomous work styles don't pair up. - For a nonlinear reader, the prompts in the sidebar are a tug toward linear reading. I couldn't determine if they were a distraction or not. I kept hiding and unhiding. - many principles outlined in the book echo James Webb Young's classic 1965 book "A Technique for Producing Ideas."

- I'm reading with the sidebar open - I read linearly. After each each with a prompt, I read the prompt. - I'm not adding any prompts as I go. I want to see them all so I get a sense of what's the most important. - But I like reading the prompts as I go because it keeps me focused on what I've just read. - I'm a programmer. Some of this isn't relevant to me but other stuff is. I probably won't be shaping but I'll be working with the shaper and I'd like to know their goals and constraints. - I worked on a project where our manager introduced 6-week cycles. I wonder if they were inspired by this book. The big problem we had was that requirements gathering always took longer than expected and resulted in increased scope. I wonder if this book will talk about requirements gathering. Maybe our problems didn't fit this work model well because there were many more unknowns. - One prompt explicitly calls shaping risky and unknown work that's hard to schedule. I wonder how our project would have gone with two tracks. Six weeks of requirements gathering. But that seems so hard to do without actually building anything. - I find I'm getting the most info out of the prompts. I'm missing info in paragraph form. but catching it in prompt form. E.g. the fact that shaping work is only shared with the rest of the team after committing to it. I find that very surprising and I don't know if I agree with it. Yet I skipped over it in the paragraph. - I surprised by that rule because it sounds like the people doing the work don't get a say in it before it's been committed to. But I know earlier they mentioned a betting process. So maybe next chapter will explain. - I think the "remembered" and "forgotten" buttons aren't obvious that they save the card to my deck. Or what if I wanted to see the answer but after seeing the answer didn't want to add it to my deck. - It feels weird to add cards to my deck if I don't know that I agree with them yet - I only added the 5 main takeaway cards. I'm not invested enough in this book to want to remember more details. - Oh the next chapter defines appetite. I was wondering about that but I never got around to making my own prompt - Adding the definition of appetite right away because I know I was wondering about that. - I get bored reading some sections and skip to the prompt to see if I already understand the section - It'd be nice if the sidebar table of contents highlighted where you are in the chapter and in the book - I like the idea of not keeping a backlog. We've had that problem before. Is it worth it to add that prompt to my deck? I like the idea but I can't tell if it's worth it to spend time remembering that basecamp does this. I'm choosing not to unless it's a recommended prompt at the end. - Now I'm getting bored reading so I'm going straight to the prompts. If they pique my interest, I go back to the text to elaborate. - Sometimes the prompt makes no sense unless I read the text. Then the prompt doesn't really contain the information. It's just there to trigger my memory. I guess I could reword it but that seems like too much effort for info I don't care a ton about. - Ahaha the "2.0" label for grab-bag projects resonates with me. I've seen a lot of projects like that. - UX issue - I clicked download anki deck and there was no user feedback for several seconds before the file started to download - oh cool, the anki cards link back to source - Bug in anki deck - the link to chapter has 127.0.0.1 as the domain - Tried reviewing in anki but I don't think I have enough motivation to parse through long sentences like this - But I did appreciate having the prompts next to the text. Made it easier to focus when I was getting bored.

Connor Stack

* You said no evaluating but overall I REALLY love this. * At its most basic this does all the hard work that I’d like to do for many of the books I read, that feels incredible. * The question quality seems better than I would produce, especially on my first pass. * I found the sidebar much more helpful than expected: I can quickly checkpoint that I understood the key point. * There are definitely prompts I’d skip and that feels empowering and also makes me think I’d be more likely to actually keep up the reviews. Those prompts are still helpful for making sure I understood the core point, even if I don’t want to commit to them longterm. * Editing the prompts/answer is great. I often found that certain words wouldn’t quite resonate with me or match my voice and that complicated recall * Being able to add my own prompts is great but it feels a bit intimidating, even as a regular Anki user. I think it’s because it constrats with all the well written prompts. (This could be fine where I only need my own prompts for things the author didn’t address or that are related to things not in the text e.g. “How does shaping methodology compare to xyz method?”) * It didn’t want to remember the 3 key properties but tried to guess them anyway (instead of skipping) and was briefly confused about how to undo that (having seen the Skip button before) but I figured out that I could use the list very quickly. It then actually came back again and I hit Skip and that felt fine/good (oops, it then came back again, so that’s probably a bug - ignore).

Can Sar

Two immediate thoughts before I even started using it: 1. In the sidebar panel I love how "Write a new prompt" follows my mouse around in the blank space 2. I had already read Chapter 2 of the book, so I skipped to the end to go through review. Answering the questions was harder than I expected, and that immediately made me feel a need to use the mnemonic medium on other things I read!