I work in a lab that does high throughput screening, and I do develop internal web-based toolsets. After several years of iterations I can say that so far elect

I work in a lab that does high throughput screening, and I do develop internal web-based toolsets. After several years of iterations I can say that so far electronic lab notebooks never worked; there are even several commercial software available. There are several reasons behind it: 1) Protocols are not a fixed predefined setup. One of the most important part of a protocol is the annotations on top. What went wrong, what did you change, etc. Today I have a repository of hand-written protocols (see [2]) that people print before going to the lab, write a date on it, and write comments on it. I cannot imagine this process of taking notes will be disrupted in near future, unless a very easy to use note taking system is there. IPad, LiveScribe (even wrote an app for it) et al are not there. 2) Writing protocols for lab people is cumbersome. Especially in our lab that has a protocol for every little process, to ensure reproducibility and standards. Asking them to sit behind computers (or mobile phone) to write is madness. The best that worked so far is I ask them to write and draw the process. Scan it, store in db, and print it with a click before experiment. They are happier than ever. Once done, I scan them back into db with date attached, and use evernote to search inside in case. The drawback is th editing part, but surprisingly they prefer to rewrite the whole thing rather than edit it behind the computer. 3) Protocols are subject to change, unless they are standard protocols (probably the market that this kickstarter is aiming). How should people store the revisions of the protocols? which one was used in the last experiment? did this modification work? think about a "git" system for protocols! 4) Lab people hate computers. They hate to use mobile phones to do anything than checking mails and calls. They love paper. Anything touchable. Taking mobiles into the lab is messy (google glass?). I have a feeling this can work with a geeky lab person but majority will oppose strongly. 5) Try to enter a protocol inside the tool. It will take ages until I have a smart protocol that may use non-standard agents inside. They need to work on a smarter way of entering protocols. Forms are too rigid. 6) I did an A/B test for some time, and what I found out was that pictures and text combination work great together, and minimized the common errors a lot. Printing a protocol, taking with them and ticking steps added another level of quality. So, adding hand-drawn / google images to the protocols may help besides an option for printing the protocol in the mobile app. 7) I love the common repository idea. The share button will be easy enough for even the laziest laborant. I believe this is a good step toward the mess that is happening in the labs. Still the solution above currently is a local one to me; good enough for iteration 1 and will donate to push the idea forward.