A new visual mapping technique: Summapping
Jul 14th, 2006 | By Chuck Frey | Category: News
Arjen ter Hoeve, author of podcasts and training materials focused on mind mapping, has written an e-book on a new visual mapping technique he has developed called "summapping." Briefly summarized, it looks a lot like mind mapping, except that maps can contain items that may be closely related to one another (and therefore are located in close proximity in the diagram), but don’t always need to be joined using connector lines. His objectives in developing this technique, which borrows a lot of concepts and practices from both mind mapping and concept mapping, are to:
- Provide a more flexible medium for recording information and ideas (by creating collections of information that aren’t necessarily tied to a rigid, connected hierarchy)
- Make the contents of visual maps easier for others to understand (by incorporating a standardized set of map symbols and mapping conventions)
- Capture more information in a compact format (both more map elements, as well as a greater variety of content).
If you’re utilizing a mind mapping program that can incorporate "floating" topics, you can try this technique on your own. Arjen’s new summmapping website contains information on how to buy his new e-book, information on software for creating summaps, symbols that you can use and more.
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I appreciate Arjen’s attempts at spreading the ideas and concepts about mind mapping, but summaps? Looks like a mind map with floating nodes. I’m not very impressed.
I looked at the examples and I could not understand, either what a summap is or the data it was conveying to me. Maybe that’s the point. I’ll have to buy his book to understand. Pass.
Mind maps are inherently personal creations. I use them, but I’ve never thought they were very good at conveying to other people my ideas. Software today really helps with that by allowing a mind map to be re-organized into an outline. That’s what we need more of, not different ways to conceptualize it. Also, I’m wanting better collaboration tools.
I don’t think summaps will go beyond Arjen’s creative mind.
Interesting thoughts Thomas is sharing. Must have been the same thing people said who create conceptmaps when they saw mindmaps (mindmaps are just conceptmaps with one centre and not clearly defined relations between nodes).
This is where Thomas goes wrong. SumMapping is not mindmapping or even a form of mindmapping. Actually, if you look at it technically, mindmapping should be a form of SumMapping.
Both have a different audience, just like conceptmapping and mindmapping. Sure, the maps look like mindmaps but that is just a form which is easy to use. Where mindmapping is something that allows us to structure knowledge, SumMaps go beyond that.
I do appreciate the thoughts of Thomas and hope to continue this discussion with him and other people who have thoughts on this topic or on SumMapping.
I hope to do that on the summap blog located at http://blog.summap.org.
Thanks!