Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Paper notebooks
Raised as a usability problem by 8 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2009–2025), in 6 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Easy to get lost finding earlier notes without an indexUnreviewed
20092026- Easy to get lost finding earlier notes without an index2025-05-28
- Without an index, it's easy to get lost finding past notes2025-05-28
- Paper notes are hard to search, find again, and link to older notes2022-09-18
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 8 complaints
- Easy to get lost finding earlier notes without an index2025-05-28
- Without an index, it's easy to get lost finding past notes2025-05-28
- Slow to write, very hard to search, almost impossible to copy or share2025-05-28
- Paper notes are hard to search, find again, and link to older notes2022-09-18
- Hard to find what's needed among many pages, causing duplicate pages2022-05-01
- Notebook pages are hard to scan, and notes can't be searched afterward2022-02-21
- Taking notes on paper is slow and you can't edit or format them2021-05-18
- Pages of half-crossed-out to-do items are hard to sort through2009-11-15