Live Notes: Capture Observations with Any Recording Tool

When you're running a research session, you're constantly juggling roles: interviewer, listener, observer. You want to stay present with the participant, but you also want to capture the moment a hesitation happens, a reaction occurs, or a participant's eyes light up.

Taking notes during an interview often meant missing something else. You're switching between tools, writing in a separate doc, or just trying to hold onto a thought until there's a pause. You're half-present in the conversation and half-worried you'll forget that crucial observation.

The challenge isn't just about multitasking during the session—it's what happens after. Transcripts are useful, for sure. But if your key observation was visual, subtle, or unspoken, making sense of it can be difficult.

You might find yourself scrubbing through recordings, trying to match a vague memory to a specific moment in the video. "It was somewhere around the middle... I think they frowned when they clicked that button... or was it the other one?" Next thing you know, you're manually copying timestamps, hunting through your notes trying to figure out which observation corresponds to when it happened, and piecing everything back together.

Live Notes bring your observations into the same timeline as your transcript and recording. That means you can capture the nuance while the moment is fresh, and revisit it with complete context when you're analyzing. No manual reconnecting or switching tools.

Before Live Notes, your workflow might have looked like this: take notes in a separate tool during the session, then manually match those notes to your recording in Condens afterward. Find the timestamp. Locate the moment. Copy the context. Repeat for every observation.

WIth Live Notes, that manual work dissapears:

1. Start before your session
   When you create a Session in Condens, open the Live Notes window. A small, unobtrusive pop-up appears where you can type your observations.
   

2. Take notes during the session
   As the conversation unfolds, capture what matters. Each note is automatically time-stamped and attributed to its author. If teammates are observing, they can contribute in the same window—all observations stay together in real-time.
   

3. Sync your notes with no effort
   When the session ends, your notes sync with your recording and transcript. For Zoom recordings, this happens automatically. For any other recording tool—Google Meet, Teams, phone recordings, in-person cameras—just enter the time you started recording (when you pressed record) and everything aligns.

That's it. Your observations are now part of your data, ready for analysis. You can tag, highlight, and reference them in Condens' AI-powered raw data analysis. When you're analyzing navigation issues or building a report for stakeholders, those moments become searchable bookmarks that you can surface in one click.

You can continue adding or editing notes directly in the transcript. Your notes appear side-by-side with the transcript and bookmarks, so you always maintain context.

Some sessions generate minimal spoken content. For example, usability tests where participants work in silence, field observations where people are focused on tasks, and screen shares where the real story is in what someone does, not what they say.

With Live Notes, you add the context transcripts can't, like the hesitation, the workarounds, the confusion visible in how someone interacts with your product.

Here's how they fit into different settings:

Usability testing

Participants are often quiet during usability tests, focused on completing tasks rather than narrating their thoughts. You're watching for friction points, hesitations, moments where they try something that doesn't work.

With Live Notes, you can capture those observations as they happen without breaking your focus or asking participants to pause. A quick note about where someone got stuck, what they tried instead, or how they reacted keeps that context connected to the exact moment in the recording. Later, when you're looking for patterns across sessions, those timestamped observations are already there, linked to the recording and transcript.

Remote sessions with multiple observers

When multiple people are observing the same session, everyone's observations need to end up in the same place. Maybe you're moderating while colleagues watch for different cues. One person might focus on usability issues, another on emotional reactions, another on follow-up questions.

Using Live Notes means all those observations are captured together, attributed to who wrote them, and automatically connected to the recording timeline. No need to merge separate documents afterward or figure out whose notes referred to which moment.

In-person field research

Whether you're observing how technicians use equipment, how nurses interact with software, or how customers navigate a retail space, people are usually focused on their actual work, not explaining it to you. You're there to see the workarounds they've developed, the steps they skip, the tools they prefer over what's officially provided.

Live Notes give you a way to capture those observations in real-time without pulling out a separate notebook or trying to remember timestamps later. Everything you note is automatically timestamped and synced with whatever recording setup you're using; a camera, your phone, a voice recorder.

Phone interviews

No video means you're relying entirely on tone, pacing, and pauses to read the conversation. When someone goes quiet for a few seconds after a question, that silence can mean uncertainty, discomfort, or careful consideration.

Live Notes let you mark those moments—long pauses, shifts in energy, topics that generate more or less enthusiasm. Since you're recording the call anyway, having your observations sync automatically with the audio means you can revisit those moments later with full context.

Moderated group sessions or workshops

In group settings like co-design workshops or focus groups, a lot happens simultaneously. Multiple people talking, building on each other's ideas, disagreeing, or coming to consensus.

You need to capture who said what, how the group reacted, which ideas generated the most energy. Live Notes let you mark those moments as they unfold: this person's comment sparked the breakthrough, that suggestion got ignored, this topic created tension. Since everything's timestamped and synced with your recording, you can go back and review the full context of any moment that mattered.

A good note is short, clear, and easy to revisit. Here are a few tips:

Be concise but concrete

Write in phrases that capture what happened without unnecessary words.

• Instead of:"The participant seemed to be confused about where to find the shipping options."

• "Couldn't find shipping options" is just as clear.

Avoid vague labels or references like "they" or "this"

Be specific about what you're noting. Describe the specific behavior or observation.

For example:

• "Weird reaction to checkout" might not help you later on as much as "Clicked 'Help' expecting FAQ, got redirected to homepage, looked frustrated" will.

• "Thought 'Shipping Info' meant tracking, not entering address" works better than just "Misunderstood this".

The key is finding the balance: specific enough to understand later, concise enough to capture quickly.

Include just enough context to understand it later

Ideally, you shouldn't need to watch the clip again to remember what happened.

• Instead of just: "Missed button"

• Use: "Didn't see the 'Continue' button, scrolled up and down, then gave up"

Use consistent wording across similar behaviors

This makes it easier to spot patterns when reviewing or tagging later. If three participants "skipped the tutorial," use that exact phrase each time rather than mixing "ignored tutorial," "bypassed intro," and "didn't watch walkthrough."

Capture intent or emotion when possible

Was the user confused, delighted, frustrated? Using brackets like [Confused], [Hesitant], [Delighted], or [Annoyed] can help you scan and sort notes at a glance.

• "Clicked 'Advanced Settings' immediately [Confident]"

• "Hovered over 'Export' button for 10 seconds without clicking [Uncertain]"

You can also use color-coding to add a visual mark to your notes based on sentiment, for example.

Resist the urge to capture everything

A few well-placed notes are more useful than a cluttered timeline. Ask yourself: Will this help us answer a research question later? If not, let it go.

Note questions as they arise

If something seems unclear or worth digging into later, note it as a question:

• "Why did they skip the profile setup?"

• "Do other participants also avoid the search bar?"

These make great prompts for follow-up interviews or deeper analysis.

All of that being said, not everything has to happen in the moment. Sometimes the real insight clicks when you're reviewing the recording later. You can add notes directly in the transcript, making it a very flexible addition to your workflow. And because they're all equally tied to the timeline, you'll never lose track of what happened when.

Live Notes support real-time collaborative note-taking. While one person leads the interview, others can observe and take notes in the same Session, in the same shared window. This means your observations stay aligned from the start. Everyone is working off the same timeline, with no need to merge separate docs or manually sync afterward.

Here are some tips for collaborative notetaking:

1. Clarify who's taking notes before the session starts
   Decide who's moderating and who's observing. If there's more than one observer, split responsibilities. One person watches for usability issues, another captures emotional reactions, a third notes questions for follow-up.

2. Use color-coding intentionally
   Agree on a simple color scheme before you start. For example: blue for usability issues, green for positive moments, yellow for open questions. This helps during analysis and reduces overlap.

3. Avoid duplication, focus on complementing each other
   When multiple people are noting the same moment, try to build on each other's input. Add nuance, not repetition. One person might highlight a user quote while a teammate captures the body language or reaction it triggered.

4. Review notes together after the session
   Spend 5–10 minutes syncing up on what stood out. Clarify any unclear notes, confirm timestamps if needed, and identify early themes before diving into deeper analysis.

5. Focus on meaningful moments
   Aim for signal over noise. Not every interaction needs a note. Focus on moments that spark reactions, confusion, delight, or reveal useful patterns.

Beyond Live Notes, we've released several other improvements to Condens:

• Export Artifacts as Excel or CSV and integrate Condens with TheyDo

• Dynamically resize tables with the new 'Fit to width' option for cleaner presentations

• Accessibility improvements for stakeholders viewing and interacting with research

• Advanced permission settings for Project, Participant, and Artifact information fields.

The best research insights don't always come from direct answers to your questions. Sometimes it's how someone reacts to something, or a behavior pattern you notice building across multiple sessions, or just a moment that stands out as important to revisit.

Live Notes help you capture those observations without the usual friction of keeping notes in one tool and recordings in another. You start a session, take notes as things happen, and when you're done, everything syncs up automatically with your recording and transcript. If your team is observing together, everyone's notes end up in the same place.

The workflow is the same regardless of how you're recording—Zoom call, phone interview, in-person session with a camera. Your notes get timestamped and integrated into your transcript timeline, so later when you're analyzing, you don't need to hunt for that moment you remembered noting down.

If you need help getting started with live notetaking in Condens, visit our Help Center or reach out to us at hello@condens.io. We'd also love to hear any thoughs, feedback, or input you're open to sharing!