-
The elephant in the room: nobody uses diaries anymore, because everyone has iCal (or some other online digital planning tool).
-
We assumed that people use diaries less than they used to.
-
Given we know that a lot of people use paper notebooks, we thought that a diary would normally act as a secondary tool to back up the notebook and / or digital devices.
-
We thought people would like something slim and lightweight, so they didn’t have to lug a big book around with them.
-
People that use diaries, love their diaries.
-
Several of the keen diary users use it instead of a notebook, and it is the basis of all of their ‘action’ lists or ‘to do’ lists as well as telling them where they need to be and when.
-
People tend to see a diary as an investment because they use it so much; and they often keep them years afterwards.
-
Often used in conjunction with a digital diary, the paper diary is the ‘master copy’ and only the diary owner is ‘allowed’ to write in (or read) it. One person described the diary as ‘protecting’ them - in sharp contrast to a laptop where people can bombard you with information, appointments etc.
-
The diary is a private space.
-
Several people talked about using a diary to ‘train’ them to remember things and to structure priorities or actions for the day / week.
-
Diary users are aware of the value of the diary, both in terms of money spent and of the environmental impact of using up pages. So there is an awareness of space not to be wasted (perhaps implicitly the time that this space represents, too).
- Many do not use space efficiently, with awkward areas of white space which are too small to be useful.
-
Some info is taking up space but of little use (eg. ‘Week 27’).
-
Some info is repeated (eg. saying ‘September’ more than once on a spread).
-
Sometimes what works graphically or numerically (eg. dividing the page into 8 even squares) does not work in terms of planning your days, or reinforcing a mental picture of the week.
