Microsoft Office

StickySorter is an Office Labs sponsored spare-time project by two Microsoft employees, Julie and Sumit. The idea sprung from the need for project teams all over the world to gather and organize data using a collaborative process known as affinity diagramming. Since its inception, StickySorter has evolved into a desktop application so anyone can use it to collaborate and organize ideas electronically, using a familiar sticky note interface.

Project: StickySorter

StickySorter is an Office Labs sponsored spare-time project by two Microsoft employees, Julie and Sumit. The idea sprung from the need for project teams all over the world to gather and organize data using a collaborative process known as affinity diagramming. Since its inception, StickySorter has evolved into a desktop application so anyone can use it to collaborate and organize ideas electronically, using a familiar sticky note interface.

Using StickySorter you can:

Effectively organize ideas into named groups which can be easily manipulated and rearranged.
Create custom views of data imported from spreadsheets or entered directly in the application.
Improve virtual brainstorming with features for navigating, searching, and arranging notes.
Collaborate across geographic boundaries by using StickySorter with Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

StickySorter was inspired by a real problem we encountered at work: Julie’s team was conducting a large study with researchers all over the world. They needed to sift through hundreds of research observations and organize them into groups using a process known as affinity diagramming. Affinity diagramming typically involves a team of people gathering in a room, writing down individual ideas or observations on sticky notes, placing the notes on a wall or whiteboard, and then arranging the notes into meaningful groups. The trouble was that the researchers on Julie’s team had already recorded their observations in Excel. Using sticky notes would mean they would need to manually copy all their observations onto notes, and then, after completing the affinity diagram, retype the observations and groups back into Excel. Furthermore, using sticky notes would require all the researchers on the team to be in the same room in order to participate.

Julie knew her team was far from alone in their frustration. Affinity diagramming is a process commonly used in many disciplines such as user research, product planning, and design. Inspired by this widespread need, we developed StickySorter as a means to bring affinity diagramming—and information organization in general—into the age of digital information and distributed teams. We developed a prototype, and after several iterations, arrived at StickySorter v1, which Julie’s team used to conduct many affinity diagramming sessions throughout their project.

StickySorter might have ended there, but other folks at Microsoft began hearing about the application and requesting to use it in their own projects. Until this point, we had been working on StickySorter as a side project on evenings and weekends. To release StickySorter to a larger audience, we knew we were going to need some help. That’s where the good folks of Office Labs came in: they offered us support in taking StickySorter from the original v1 prototype to the more complete and polished version that you can download today. Many thanks to Joe Coplen (Developer), Natasha Desai (Program Manager), and Nina Shih (Designer) for all their help in making that happen!