Research process tools

Hi guys,

I am a design student, and everytime there is a new brief there is new research to be done. I am curious what kind of programms/applications do you use while researching in order to store your ideas etc.?

I do use Evernote or just create a folder where I store all my links etc. But I don’t find it that efficient and there is a slight problem with organizing things too.

I like using Trello for storing ideas - you can organize cards by category, and really easy to keep track of what you’ve implemented and what you haven’t - even create checklists for how you’d like to implement.

Trello works very nicely, also for project management within teams.

There are also free mindmapping tools, I have used FreeMind. It’s a nice way to store trains of thought.

Over the years, I’ve come to work with a sort of moving body of knowledge - as your thinking expands old ideas, knowledge and ways of working become less relevant and you only keep the things most valuable. To keep things as simple as possible, I just have a ‘notes.txt’ file on my desktop where I keep this knowledge that I need for my projects, and at the bottom I keep the most valuable knowledge and ideas from past projects.
Once I have too many ideas for the future I start discarding the ones less relevant to me. And the web+cloud is my repository.