Blog

A creative director and a client studying a large printed proof in a studio, seen through the glass.
CreativeDeep dives

The brief changed and nobody wrote it down

A brief is never amended. It erodes, one reasonable sentence at a time, until the work is being judged against a document that only exists in the client's head.

A person fully caught up in conversation with friends at a dinner table, seen through a restaurant window.
Personal & ProductivityDeep dives

The conversation you cannot hold in your head

Listening, replying and remembering are three jobs, and only two of them are the conversation. What it costs to be your own recording device, and what changes when you stop.

Two people weighing up a decision over notes at a café table, seen through the café window.
Personal & ProductivityComparisons

How to evaluate an AI note taker

Questions worth putting to anyone selling one of these, a test you can mark in a week, and our own answers to four of them. A buyer's guide written by one of the sellers.

Two people in conversation at a standing table in a busy co-working space, seen through glass.
Client-facingComparisons

Wearable recorders vs meeting bots

Two ways a client conversation gets captured, and the conversations each of them cannot reach. A comparison of categories, including the one Ona is in and what that costs.

A developer thinking at a desk by a window at night, seen from outside through the glass.
Technical & ProductAutomation

Your meeting memory in every AI tool

Ona MCP lets another AI tool read what you have recorded. What a connected tool can see, what leaves your account when it asks, and what revoking does and does not undo.

A person reading a single printed page with morning coffee at a café counter, seen through the window.
Business LeadershipAutomation

The brief that arrives before you need it

A Routine is a question you have decided to stop asking. How to design a standing brief with a reader, a moment and a decision — and how to tell when one has stopped earning its place.

Through a consulting-room door, a practitioner leans forward to ask a question, the other person seen only from behind.
Health ProfessionalsPlaybooks

Asking to record without making it weird

Whether to record is an ethical question. Whether the asking is bearable is a question of delivery, and it is the one nobody covers. A playbook for the five seconds themselves.

A manager and a colleague deep in a one-on-one by a window, seen through the office's glass door.
Business LeadershipPlaybooks

One-on-ones that actually follow through

The one-on-one is the meeting managers hold most often and the one that leaves the least behind. A playbook for the carry-over between conversations, which is where it fails.

A person talking with a tradesperson at their front door, seen from inside through its glass panel.
Personal & ProductivityPlaybooks

The week you stop carrying it in your head

A quote at the door, a reference number read out in a car park, a date from a ten-minute conversation. A playbook for the household admin that only ever existed as speech.

A student writing questions in a notebook at a library window desk, seen from outside through the glass.
Knowledge & EducationPlaybooks

From lecture to revision notes

Typing everything gets you a worse copy of the slides. A playbook for turning a lecture you had permission to record into questions you can actually revise from.

Two designers at a wall of pinned layouts, one pointing at a print, seen through a studio's glass partition.
CreativePlaybooks

Client feedback that survives the brief

Feedback decays between the review call and the file. A playbook for separating direction from preference, writing the change list, and getting a yes before you open the work.

A practitioner leaving an empty consulting room at the end of the day, seen through its window.
Health ProfessionalsPlaybooks

Session notes without the evening admin

Six sets of notes written at nine at night are six sets of notes written badly. A playbook for practitioners who want the writing finished before they leave.