Edi Piqoni

If you're in a profession that requires you to frequently retrieve a lot of hard-to-remember text information/snippets/commands then you probably use a note keeping desktop or web app. I mostly use Workflowvy for work and Simplenote for personal stuff. They are great at writing notes (nice UI, categorization and such) but what they usually lack is the retrieving part.

In my workflow, I write the note once, and I have to retrieve it many many times. So, the retrieving part should be way faster and doesn't necessarily need to have the same UI as adding them (if speed is compromised by doing that).

Steps to get a note from Workflovy (or similar apps):

1. Grab mouse, click Workflovy bookmark, or tab having Workflovy. 
2. Click Search textfield
3. Write search keyword
4. Double click to select the text of note that I want to copy (most common scenario for me)
5. Ctrl + C to copy it the clipboard
6. Close Workflovy, or switch view with ALT + TAB, and continue work.
7. Rethink all your life decisions (optional)

What I believe the ideal UX for note retrieving should be:

1. "CTRL + ~" or any other keyboard shortcut to open a search interface (so mouseless)
2. Write search keyword (while writing, matching note should be autoselected)
3. Press Enter (app closes, and content is added to clipboard automatically, continue work)

So, yesterday I wrote an early prototype called Memento that follows this second approach for retrieving notes. I exported my Workflowy notes to CSV so Memento can read them, and I'll start using it and see how it goes. If I find it useful, I might continue improving and polishing it a bit since desktop development is not really my expertise at the moment.

Source Code and Installation guide: Memento