Under Cloud is an operating system for knowledge synthesis, aimed at knowledge workers, students, journalists… people who create and manage knowledge, two things the likes of Obsidian, Roam Research, and Notion struggle to do because, having accumulated a ton of notes and research: “What now?”
Wayne Smallman
Our workflows are a mad composite of different products and services.
Our research becomes fragmented.
Creation is simple, but finding and combining is a challenge.
Organisation degrades with scale, increasing cognitive burden.
Because our notes and research are separate, we’re forced to switch context again and again.
Imagine if none of these things had to be the case?
The knowledge we create must be transferable and actionable because that’s how we make the best decisions.
So that’s the soft pivot in 60 seconds.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, the original Under Cloud is still there, underneath — it’s the engine, the beating heart, the core of everything else above it.
Years ago, I created a bunch of questionnaires and ran them through Prolific to build some understanding of the segments I was hoping to target (students and journalists at the time). I learned a lot from that initial exercise, and out of it — in combination with the product-market fit — having honed the thinking, segments, and the questions, I’ve accumulated hundreds of responses that have gone beyond confirmation of the hypotheses, contributing to the pain points mentioned in the above opening message.
With that data, and having talked to professional researchers across diverse backgrounds, I’ve made the most consequential changes to the Under Cloud in some time.
Everything is synthesis
Synthesis Document Framework is the name of this huge side quest, and having wrangled hundreds of responses from students and knowledge workers, the reward was a treasure trove of data.
Our workflows are a mad composite of different products and services.
Notion, Obsidian, Evernote, Roam Research, OneNote were mentioned again and again by the respondents who talked at length about how those products didn’t fit with(in) their workflows and often didn’t work as expected.
Both groups mention using tools like Zotero, OneNote, Google Docs, in addition to citation (EndNote) and reference (Mendeley) managers, sharing a general dissatisfaction with them and their inability to support their research workflows.
Creation is simple, but finding and combining is a challenge.
A majority of both groups (~50%+) report moderate difficulty, with relatively few rating this as easy (4–5), indicating a shared struggle with information management.
Once we find and combine, the synthesis is the logical next stage, but according to the data that wasn’t happening, and so because of that:
Organisation degrades with scale, increasing cognitive burden.
Because our notes and research are separate, we’re forced to switch context again and again.
Between 60-80% of students and knowledge workers estimated spending a significant amount of time organising and re-finding research materials (often rated 3-5 on a 1-5 scale), detracting from time spent on analysis or synthesis.
A workflow is comprised of stages and it exists to manage the life cycle of a widget, be it physical or digital. In this case, the widget became a knowledge product, such as a: thesis chapter; grant proposal; or literature review.
While my Bachelor of Arts with honours required a dissertation, that was a much different animal from a different era (completed in 1997) compared to what’s expected of undergraduates and postgraduates.
I learned a long time ago that there’s a world of difference between building a thing and using it, so I decided to write a literature review … because why not?
The underlying thinking was simple: I learn how to write piece of academic literature; and demonstrate that the Under Cloud has both substance and merit.
You’re probably wondering how that went, and if so, allow me to explain…
Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash
