The Secret Weapon for Effective Research Planning

Great research is the key to great inventions. In ancient Greece, the mathematician Heron of Alexandria (“Hero”) was a master inventor. His inventions included the first recorded steam engine, vending machine and thermometer to name a few! 💡

When it came to recording his research, Hero relied on good old fashioned papyrus paper made from the plant of the same name. His ‘notebooks’ would consist of rolls on rolls of papyrus sheets on top of the other and would take a very long time to produce. 

Even though it was relatively cheap and easy to produce, papyrus was fragile and susceptible to ageing. In general, writers had difficulty writing on papyrus if it wasn’t in perfect condition, since its surface was uneven. 📜

Thankfully we’ve come a long way from writing on woven plants. Today we look to any number of online tools to record our ideas, be they word processing softwares or spreadsheets. 

But why settle here? No-code tools like Gridfox are enabling everyone and anyone to create powerful applications that can directly benefit their research process. Record ideas, organise research leads and note all feedback using Gridfox’s intuitive interface.

And, with the no-code industry projected to be worth between £43 and 90 billion in the next five years, this ‘secret’ weapon is quickly becoming the top choice for researchers and inventors alike! 

Let’s look at what makes Gridfox the ideal tool for concept research. 🔎

Easily organised 

Any good research record should contain all of the necessary information surrounding the research process. With Gridfox’s intuitive interface, users can easily add data related to your research projects. This might include initial ideas, lists of sources, contacts or suggestions for improvement. 

As well as the information collected during a project, a record may also include information about how the material was collected, along with revisions to your idea moving forward. 📂

For every area covered, you can add a table in Gridfox that showcases all of the relevant data. Specify data even further with filters so that you can get that crucial visibility over different research areas. 

With the capacity to store and organise your research, Gridfox ensures that all data is looked after and can be quickly accessed when required. Long gone are the days of sieving through flimsy ring binders or endless digital folders for your research notes. 💾

With a few clicks you’ve got all your relevant data at your fingertips, which means you can spend more time focusing on your research and less time organising those mountains of data. 

Always adaptable 

Developing research ideas requires continuous improvement. This is nurtured through feedback sessions and suggestions. To record these findings effectively, the tools you use need to be flexible enough to accommodate developments resulting from this feedback.  

With Gridfox, you can add tables centred around feedback to record all this relevant data and ensure that you’re always striving for improved releases. 🥇

Fields can be your friend during the feedback process too. Configure your fields by a number of criteria, such as status, date and time, so that you can distinguish tasks as required. Simply drag and drop your fields as you need! 

You can, similarly, rely on Gridfox for any substantial changes required to their project. All data is stored in the cloud which means that changes to your record can be made anytime and anyplace, without the risk of confusing duplicate versions. 

Safe & secure

Today’s research recording options may be more trustworthy than some scraggly paper, but that doesn’t mean that they’re without their vulnerabilities. Spreadsheets, for example, pose multiple security risks relating to user access and accessibility. 

Only last year a hacker leaked 125GB of spreadsheet data from popular streaming platform, Twitch. This incident is just one example of the countless disasters that spreadsheets have caused. 🧨

Gridfox, on the other hand, provides users with the peace-of-mind that their data is safe and secure. With cloud-hosted data and backups offering data recovery, your project data is both protected and secure from any unplanned disasters. 🌋

Working with a research team? Gain full traceability of all changes made to your project with Gridfox’s audit trails; you’ll be able to see who, what and when changes have been made, providing a level of transparency that is not possible to achieve in spreadsheets. 🔒

Case study: product development

Research records can take many forms, but they should all be clear and accessible. Focused around the necessary stages of product development, Gridfox’s concept research template gives you a structure to talk with any contacts while logging any changes you would like to make to ideas, tasks and projects. 

Improvement areas are categorised so you can see easily where UI updates are required, what bugs are identified, and whatever else may need your attention. This high-level visibility will help you develop your prototypes more effectively and operate projects with agility. 🤸‍♀️

The template also comes with a Kanban board that provides easy access to vital data. Equipped with the rudiments for successful product management, users could also get creative and create another table to track the development work as it happens. 🎨

Research requires Gridfox

Keeping track of your important data in a centralised, online research platform like Gridfox ensures that all information can be easily accessed — any time and any place.

• Organise data swiftly with our intuitive interface 💻
• Adapt and scale your research project with cloud-hosted data ☁️
• Rest assured that data is safe and secure 🔐

Whether you’re building your project from scratch or using a template, Gridfox remains a solid companion to effective research. So next time you’re looking to change the world with your next invention, be your own “Hero” and use Gridfox to record every idea — big or small.