InMinutes

InMinutes was a digital workspace concept built at Goodpatch Tokyo between 2015 and 2017 for project managers and product design teams.

It started from an observation about meetings: they produce decisions, tasks, reminders, and follow ups, and almost all of that output stays inside static documents.

We interviewed more than 20 design teams across Tokyo's startup ecosystem. Project managers were spending significant time reorganizing meeting notes after every discussion.

Information sat across Google Docs, Trello, Asana, Wunderlist, calendars, Dropbox, and Drive. A meeting might finish in 30 minutes while converting the conversation into an actionable project plan took considerably longer.

The opportunity was to hold note taking and project execution in one workflow.

As Senior Product Designer I worked across the full product definition and design process, from research through prototype testing, alongside product designers and engineers.

InMinutes paired a focused writing environment with lightweight project management.

While writing notes, a user could convert any line into a task, assign an owner, set a deadline, create a reminder, and organize follow ups, without rebuilding the same information in a second tool.

The interface stayed quiet and document focused, on a restrained grey visual system that kept attention on meeting content.

The core interaction problem was balancing reading and editing.

Early prototypes separated document, sidebar, and editing states. Testing showed users were uncertain whether a document was editable, and navigation controls competed with document actions.

We simplified the model, made the transition between viewing and editing explicit, and raised the visibility of document actions.

InMinutes stayed an experimental concept and did not reach meaningful scale.

Partway through, the project pivoted. The note first workspace became Laika, a more conventional team task management tool built around boards and timelines. It was easier to explain and closer to what teams were already buying, and it moved the product away from the insight it started from.

We built it before integrated workspaces became mainstream, when collaboration workflows were still spread across specialised tools. The concept addressed a real user problem, and product quality on its own was not enough to establish a sustainable product.

It taught me how much the outcome depends on market timing, distribution, technical investment, and business commitment sitting alongside the design work.