Getting the most out of topic cards

In Ilaro, the research topic card is one of your most important tools in organizing, navigating, and understanding your research. On the grid, the topic card reports the name of the topic, the topic category and color, and topics that share notes with the card’s topic. Related items are reported using the related item name along with a number in parentheses representing the number of notes each item has in common with the card topic.

What makes an effective topic card?

An effective topic card reflects an actual idea, person, place, or thing that is either the focus of your research or reflects an important element of your research that you find worth tracking. Research topics are not just keyword tags, but are as important to conducting your research as your notes themselves.

Identifying, clarifying, and relating ideas is an important part of any research project. Ilaro topic cards aim to assist you in that process by reporting the various topics, sources, and authors that closely relate to the topic at hand.

Well defined topic cards are a central part of your research and Ilaro encourages users to think about their research topics and not just tag using often forgettable and unmanageable keywords.

To get the most out of topic cards, create topic cards for ideas, people, places, and things important to your research and tag notes with topics related to the note content.

Ilaro recommends related topics

As you take notes, Ilaro indexes your content and tracks your “tagging” patterns. As your project grows, Ilaro will begin suggesting topics that may relate to a given note, even if the note has not been tagged with that topic. To get the most out of the recommendation system, be sure to tag note cards with the important and relevant topics that correspond to the note. This will supply enough information to allow Ilaro to suggest topics on notes you may forget to tag or whose content may relate to other research topics.

To view possible related topics, tap a note card to show note details.

Last updated: August 25, 2019