Admire the flowing, colorful goodness at eepybird.com.

Update: Even better than the eepybird site is the Vimeo video. The similar videos include the How We Did It which is pretty cool. Clearly, we should all buy 3M stock now. Every jr. high school class will be making these.

Just found this project on instructables.com. It’s the perfect short and sweet craft project for sticky-note ninjas everywhere. I gotta make me a few of these babies:

Transforming Post-it Note Star 

This is an 8 point ninja star that you can make out of any 8 pieces of square paper (Post-it notes are just convenient and about the right size)

These sure-as-shuriken will come in handy with group activities.

But these make me reconsider. There are a lot of benefits to being a sticky ninja. I think I’ll get some of these to give to others who follow the path.

Go crazy.

DSC07055

Originally uploaded by kateruttr

Thanks to all the folks who attended the “Become a Sticky Note Ninja” workshop at UX Week 2008. It was great spending the day with you and meeting you all.

The slides and the activity handouts are available on the tools and downloads page. In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting slideshares of the different methods, so keep a lookout.

Also, if you have stickynote ninja tales to tell, please email me at kate [at] intelleto [dot] com. I’d love to hear how you are ninja-ing in your organizations, and to spread your success stories.

Here’s my session description:

Become a Sticky-Note Ninja

In this workshop you will:

* Discover how to pick the right sticky-note solution for a specific problem
* Learn how to lead a group in collaborative sticky-note sessions
* Organize a workroom for maximum collaborative success
* Explore the keys to quickly and easily documenting workgroup results
* Investigate how to work asynchronously via sticky-note boards

Sticky notes (a.k.a. Post-it Notes®) have become the lingua franca for remembering pesky tasks and to-do items. Although this is helpful, their real potential lies in effectively and rapidly organizing collaborative group work. Unfortunately, few teams know how to make the most of these simple yet powerful tools. In this workshop, you will learn to maximize the potential of sticky notes, taking your group-collaboration skills to the next level and, in turn, become a real Sticky-note Ninja.

This workshop will explore how to use sticky notes in all stages of the design process, from strategy and design through development. You will learn 8 simple, flexible and effective methods to help you discover new ideas, unpack problems, document workflows, identify issues and opportunities (and what to do about them) and keep everyone, from business folks to development teams, in sync and on target.

Armed with only the most humble of office supplies — sticky notes and sharpie pens — we’ll work through 7 major collaborative challenges:

* Unpacking problem and opportunity spaces.
* Brainstorming ideas and prioritizing the best ones.
* Gathering design and development goals.
* Building consensus for a shared direction.
* Making sense of complex workflows.
* Delving into the roots of a problem so that you can solve it appropriately.
* Creating idea constellations that spark new approaches and directions.

So become a Sticky-Note Ninja and get the most out of these simple, yet important, design tools.

There will be 36 folks in the session, and I’ll try to grab photos of the workshop as it happens. After the workshop, the slide deck will be posted here.

Because there are 3 hours for the session, we’ll be able to get into more than lecture+activities…we’ll have a group exercise to learn with and from each other. We’ll all share our experiences in running and attending participatory group sessions, and we’ll capture the knowledge of the group (and yes, we’ll be using sticky notes, heh.) After the session, we’ll share out the learnings to the larger UX Week attendee audience.

So stay tuned for the blog post of the results!

Now that’s a big stickie

Originally uploaded by Dan Harrelson

My collegues Dan and Leah also spoke at Agile 2008, and Dan sent along this stickynote sighting.

The stickies are stuck on the back panel of a vendor booth. It’s a little hard to see the scale, but I estimate the size of these pink notes notes at about 2ft x 2ft-ish, and the yellow ones about 1ft x 1ft.

So of course, I’m drooling. Turns out you can get the mega stickies at www.megasticky.com/.

Here’s the session description:

Sticky notes (aka Post-it Notes [tm]) have become the lingua franca of remembering pesky tasks and to-do items…yet their real potential lies in effectively and rapidly organizing collaborative group work. However, few teams know how to make the most of these simple yet powerful tools. In this workshop you’ll take your group collaboration skills to the next level with a set of methods that maximize the potential of sticky notes.

In user experience work, sticky notes are used in all stages of the process, from strategy to design and through development. In this hands-on tutorial, we’ll cover 8 simple, flexible and impactful methods that help you unpack problems, document workflows, identify issues & opportunities (and what to do about them) and keep everyone, from business folks to development teams, in sync and on target. And you’ll have the opportunity to test-drive 2-3 of these methods to gain hands-on experience with the methods.

Armed with only the most humble of office supplies (sticky notes and sharpie pens) we’ll work through 6 major collaborative challenges:

In user experience work, sticky notes are used in all stages of the process, from strategy to design and through development. In this hands-on tutorial, we’ll cover 8 simple, flexible and impactful methods that help you unpack problems, document workflows, identify issues & opportunities (and what to do about them) and keep everyone, from business folks to development teams, in sync and on target. And you’ll have the opportunity to test-drive 2-3 of these methods to gain hands-on experience with the methods.

Armed with only the most humble of office supplies (sticky notes and sharpie pens) we’ll work through 6 major collaborative challenges:

• Unpacking problem and opportunity spaces
• Gathering design and development goals
• Building consensus for shared direction
• Making sense of complex workflows
• Delving into the roots of a problem so that you can solve it appropriately
• Creating idea constellations that spark new approaches and directions

You’ll learn:

• how to pick the right method for a specific problem
• how to lead a group in collaborative sticky note sessions
• how to organize a workroom for maximum collaborative success
• keys to quickly and easily documenting workgroup results
• how to work asynchronously via sticky-note boards

Jeff and Angela have put together a great line-up for the User Experience stage. I can’t wait to learn how prototypes, patterns, personas and postcards relate to Agile development. See you there!

• Comments after the talk, on the UX Week 2007 site
• Great notes from Liya on the Insights Observed blog.
• Sam Felder captured a ton of detail on his blog’s conference notes
• Photos from Flickr, from Leah and from Andrew.