Results of the Most Improved Mind Mapping Software of 2009 survey
Jan 21st, 2010 | By Chuck Frey | Category: News
In December, I asked the readers of this blog to participate in a brief survey. Its purpose was to identify the most improved mind mapping program of 2009, to celebrate the awesome advances that the developers of this type of productivity software have made.
The Most Improved Mind Mapping Software of 2009 is (drumroll)… MindManager.
The top 5 most improved programs, based on 215 responses, were:
- MindManager (26.0%)
- NovaMind (20.9%)
- iMindMap (11.2%)
- PersonalBrain (11.2%)
- XMind (10.7%)
To view the full results as a stacked bar chart, please click on the image above.
It’s no surprise to me that MindManager was ranked number one. It has tremendous name recognition in this niche, and after some incremental improvements and a mediocre attempt at creating a collaboration tool (Mindjet Connect) in 2008, the company finally got it right in 2009 with Catalyst, a polished, full-featured collaboration environment that is really quite good.
This survey also shows us which programs are coming on strong as innovators. Gideon King and his development team at NovaMind have been relentless in pushing the envelope in terms of what’s possible with mind mapping software. It’s really cool to see that you, the readers of this blog, recognize their efforts, by NovaMind the second most improved mind mapping program in 2009 – and, significantly, only 6% behind MindManager!
iMindMap and XMind are fairly new entrants to the field of mind mapping software, making it very impressive that they came in number 3 and number 5. It appears that users and fans of mind mapping software recognize their developers’ commitment to innovation, too!
Finally, the survey results demonstrate that some of the developers of mind mapping software need to do some work in building name recognition. DropMind Desktop (37.7%), MindView (31.2%), VisualMind (30.7%) and MindGenius (27.9%) led the pack in terms of software programs that respondents weren’t aware of. DropMind is fairly new, and MindView was formerly OpenMind (the name change took place in early 2009), so those relatively high numbers are easy to understand. The other two programs have been around for a while, and I’m not sure why respondents aren’t aware of them.
Thanks to all of you who participated in this interesting survey!
Popularity: 10% [?]
Thanks for this, I’ll have to check out some of the new improved tools.
One tool that I don’t see is MindMeister and although I’m not sure if the main tool was significantly improved the integrated iPhone app has been great.
Excellent to see iMindMap in the top half of the top five! Chris and Tony will be very pleased!
Thank you Chuck – interesting to see what’s going on! A agree with Glen, it will be interesting to see what the webbased applications like MindMeister, CoMapping and Spinscape will do.
And I also agree with Tim – compliments for Chris and Tony! I expect some shifts this year because of their activities. But also at NovaMind and XMind there is some work in progress.
It’s going to be an interesting mind map year!
Surprise, surprise.
A bit sad that even in what one would hope would be the intellectually savvy world of mindmapping, marketing is still king. On one blog I saw a company trumpeting its latest wonderful new feature. My comment that my favourite software had included this feature for some time was simply moderated out of existence.
I agree with Tim, that it is good to see that iMindMap makes it in the top3. However I agree with Hans that one can expect big improvements in the SaaS online MindMapping tools as well. I am curious to see which tools improve in what way in this bright new year…
Chuck,
Great job doing the survey and very interesting results! I think your analysis might be a little flawed though. If you normalize the data by excluding those respondents who either did not use or did not know of a particular application, the assessment may be closer. HOWEVER, since the question of ‘best’ or ‘most improved’ is RELATIVE to other mindmapping apps, it may be even more accurate to look at the comparative assessments of respondents and ignore the individual assessments altogether. This method might weed out a little bias from the survey as well.
Always nice when your weapon of choice is top of the list! I am daily user of MindManager and a supplier of services to the users but I abstained. Why? Because many of MindManager’s core functions have received little attention in the last 5 years and they are crucial to way I work and the services I supply to my clients. They were the improvements I needed.
Catalyst, the Mindjet Player and sharing are fantastics tools for those who do not need the formating and content managment of the desktop application. They also require the receiver to have capability of reading e.g. correct version of Adobe Reader, Catalyst license etc.
The simplicity, speed and universitality of some of the “original” exports makes them more valuable to me and my clients. Compare the opening time of a Player or SWF file (10s of seconds) to a clickable image map (3s). I cannot see that as an improvement.
I have seen a little of iMindMap and MindGenius last year. They both have new functions for which there are obvious and valuable applications. But they don’t currently provide the suite of tools I need to do my work.
MindManager does and I will be using it to pubish three events, plan two future ones and manage my business during today. Providing I don’t distract myself with commenting on other blogs, I will have published for comment 15 clickable image maps in 20 web pages linked to 50-100 other web pages from maps inked (I can now use the eraser on my stylus in ink mode in MindManager 8.2.That was an improvement) on my Tablet PC at 3 meetings in London over the last 2 days.
To summarise my feedback to Mindjet. I like what you are doing on the leading edges (I am using Catalyst successfully with a few small groups) but you need to reinforce the core or the structure (support) may collapse!
Chuck,
What was the range of your statistical measure?
How many participants?
Can you provide demographics of the participants; Personal, Academic, Business?
The numbers may indeed add-up regarding your survey, but as a statistical thinker I would like to see a broader measure regarding population.
Statistics can (in some cases) be 99% fact and 1% truth.
As usual Chuck, an entertaining thread.
Wallace Tait
Visualmapper
[...] Silber für NovaMind 4 Veröffentlicht am 23. Januar 2010 von novamind Im Dezember 2009 fragte Chuck Frey die Leser seines Mindmap-Software-Blogs, welches von 11 vorgeschlagenen Mind-Map-Programmen das beste und am weitesten entwickelte ist. 215 Leser antworteten und hoben NovaMind auf einen sicheren 2. Platz, nur 5% vom Spitzenreiter MindManager entfernt. Zusammen bekamen diese beiden Programme knapp die Hälfte aller Stimmen. Mit großem Abstand (ca. 10%) folgten alle anderen (siehe Blog). [...]
Like Andrew I abstained from taking part in the survey, and for the same reason – even though I use MindMnager every day and I still believe that it has the best suite of tools and features for my purposes, I don’t think it has made any significant improvement in core useability.
The implementation of Catalyst is obviously very important to those who do a lot of collaborative mindmapping, but at this stage is largely irrelevant to the rest of us. MindManager’s real competition here are the web-based programs such as Comapping, Mindomo and Mindmeister, among others, most of which seem to cost a lot less than Catalyst.
Whilst I have some reservations about the process, the long-anticipated shift to web-based software is beginning to gather momentum. If Mind Manager wants to become a major player in the online space it will have to become more price-competitive; if it wants to continue to dominate the PC-based field it will have to make substantial improvements in its core software (and become more price competitive).
Intrigued by Peter Roberts’ comment I’d like to know more about it.
Please, tell us more of it or drop me a message.
Eleder
eleder.aurtenetxe@gmail.com
(very happy using XMind and seing it 5th :-!)
I’d like to chime in on where the mind-mapping companies are falling short. This is based on my personal heavy use and the struggles of trying to implement the entire MM concept in a ~300 member business unit of a 10K+ member organization. The main issue is its interrelation with other Office suite software. MM is a fantastic thinking tool. However, it is not (yet at least) a good enough presenting tool and until the mainstream of workers become comfortable passing maps around, it is not a good reading/info paper-sharing tool. Therefore, for now, MM must do a better job of exporting from a map to other presentation and word-processing software. The details of my recommendations would be too long to present here, but I may express it on my new blog page in the near future. Some recommendations for using MM in a business environment are already there. Any of this audience’s comments would be most welcome.
[...] last year, Chuck Frey of Innovation tools did a survey of the most improved Mind Mapping software, and NovaMind came second in the survey. This is an impressive result, considering that NovaMind 5, [...]
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Results of the Most Improved Mind Mapping Software of 2009 survey 가격이 넘 비싸네……
Chuck, your survey and the results were very interesting.
My thoughts in response are as follows:
1. the survey sample was encouraging but possibly a little small to warrant definitive conclusions. Having said, I think they might just be reasonably indicative nevertheless. The comments by David Sanderson (Comment 6) and Wallace Tait (Comment
are quite relevant;
2. Sylven Reed (Comment 12) made an interesting point about the difficulting of: (a) integrating mind maps with other programs; and (b) presenting with mind maps. I can see where the comment stems from but I must admit that I have had great success with presenting mind maps (particularly using Nova Mind’s presentation function). Secondly, when I’ve explained a mind map to mind map novices, they’ve often taken to them rather quickly and encouragingly; and
3. I too abstained from voting in the survey. The reason is that I haven’t yet used any other mind mapping software program other than Nova Mind, which I find to be a fantastic tool! However, without the knowledge of what others can do and how well they work, I didn’t believe it was fair to submit a totally biased vote for Nova Mind.
Thanks for the survey results and the continued informative posts!
Regards
Mike
Does anyone know why the release of Novamind 5 keeps being delayed?