What capabilities should developers add to tomorrow’s mind mapping software?
Sep 4th, 2009 | By Chuck Frey | Category: Discussion
Here’s a new question for you to ponder and respond to:
What capabilities should developers add to tomorrow’s mind mapping software?
Have you ever wished that your mind mapping software could do more? What do you wish it could do that would vastly increase your productivity or creativity? What do you envision tomorrow’s mind mapping software could do?
The sky’s the limit – please share your ideas in the comments area below!
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Nice question!
As a mind mapping software developer I’ll stay tuned for the upcoming comments
Improved import.
Not only SINGLE objects, but LISTS of items. For example, a list of words that I want to structure and understand. Or better, a CSV file of short words (titles), and longer text snippets (descriptions) to appear as notes. Ideally, the importer wizard would recognize such structures of title and detail from table rows that I copy and paste, and would suggest the appropriate columns.
Or it could recognize nested structures of a copied & pasted snippet that contains nested bullet items, and would automatically link them as parent and children nodes. In a similar way, shortcuts to files and folders on my hard disk could be linked, so that I could eventually forget the windows explorer and navigate my folders from the mapping software, which allows me to connect them with arbitrary “see also” links.
[...] Frey asks “What capabilities should developers add to tomorrow’s mind mapping software?” and I [...]
One of the simplest things that would really help me would be the ability to disable numbering on specific topics, i.e., a “Do not include in numbering” command.
I extensively use mind mapping software to created a book’s table of contents, and automatically correctly number each chapter.
This is all well and good, but, when I add an Introduction, Chapter 1 becomes chapter 2, etc.
Given the miracle capabilities of today’s mind mapping software, a “do not number” feature would really be appreciated and shouldn’t be that hard to implement.
Great question, Chuck!
Roger
We’re working with large-scale complex human problems where a 2D mind map presentation very quickly becomes overcrowded and relationship lines soon become too hard to follow, so a 3D representation of complex problems using the mind map approach would be very helpful. Something that would be easy and intuitive to add new nodes and navigate, but would provide a 3D perspective so that complex problems can be seen in their 3D complexity instead of being artificially reduced to 2D.
What I envision is something as easy and presentable as the 2D http://www.prezi.com, but with a truly 3D presentation like this video I found on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwCFurKhqiQ
If anybody knows of a tool or someone working on it, please comment here.
There’s also a fourth dimension to this. (I know, I’m already asking a lot for 3D, not to speak of 4D). The fourth dimension is time. If a 3D mind map represents a complex problem at a given point in time, I’d also like to be able to make a map of how the situation was at previous time points, and also be able to create mind maps representing how the complex problem could look in the future (e.g., under different scenarios) or how we wish it to look (e.g., for establishment of goal congruence among actors). And then I’d like to be able to grab a slider and move time from past to present to future and back, to any arbitrary time, where the mind map will morph automatically according to the time point i choose.
A lot to ask, but could be very helpful in modeling real world human problems at the large scale.
Thanks,
Kevin
Similar to other suggestions – separate representation of content from the presentation. It would be useful to choose between different visualization formats (list, 2D mind map, 3D, 4D, …) without having to alter the fundamenal relationships between the concepts. I just feel limited in current tools by having limited visualization methods. My (probably false
assumption is that taking different perspectives on a problem or concept could be enhanced by allowing different visualizations. This was just an immediate reaction to your question so apologies if I haven’t thought it through or if it is already possible. Thanks for all the information you post in this area.
Well, I think my suggestion is in a same direction as the previous ones… I frequently draw mindmaps in my booklet (meetings, idea’s on the road) in the absence of a beamer and laptop and if I want to share them.. I have to scan them, and send them as a jpg/bmp to participants. It would be nice to develop a tool that has the aibility to create a mindmap (in mindmanager, xmind or whatever format) from a drawing..
Multiple graphical formats, Presentation functions that go beyond PP and most definitely database functions.
BTW Kevin, I am with you all the way regarding societal change by way of the information contained in your links.
Wallace Tait
Visualmapper
Easy answer: Semantic capabilities.
That is, I want not only to connect nodes, but I want to specify *how* they are connected.
I want to be able to say “Hydrogen /has symbol/ H” ( a triplet, containing of subject, predicate and object ) rather than just connecting “Na” to “Sodium” without any info about how they might be associated (which makes this information useless unless I remember why I connected them).
By doing this it would also be possible to reuse facts created at different places in the tree. So, I would be able to state in another place of the tree:
“H /is letter type/ consonant”
…and then wherever I encounter “H” later on, I will be able to expand and see those facts about it.
These facts could then also be exported in a Semantic format like RDFa, and re-used for other purposes.
Just a note though about an important aspect that then needs to be taken into regard:
Things might have different meaning in different contexts. For example the word “mean” might mean different things, of which one meaning was just demonstrated earlier in this sentence, while it can also mean “average”.
Web 3.1, is that a “Semantic Relation Gravity Mind Map” ?
A really Bizzi Mind Mapping tool needs to include realtime collaboration editing with the capability to display (apart from regular nodes with images, links & docs) also:
* Scopes (like “prio 1″, “prio 2″), in different ways (opacue, distance between nodes, background area, from any node, etc)
Think of a map with a “Short term” scenario with map node objects tagged with Prio1 via a SEMANTIC group (a named context) named “Short term”.
== “Short term” ==
Nodes belonging to this semantic group are grouped closer to each other / or having their own opacue / bg-color / etc.
Not done yet.
== “Long term” ==
Next, think of ANOTHER map, using the exact SAME objects (nodes) as above. But this time the map’s displays another Semantic Group (a “semantic filter”), essentially with a setting “Prio 2″, which was cunnigly dubbed to “Long term”.
Now we have two scenarios sharing the same nodes, but conveying entirely *different information*. Again, the very same nodes conveying different information. Because context determines meaning.
The map tool displays the same nodes but organizes them differently, that is, their interrelations (or the significance of some of the interrelations) are defined differently by having a different “weight” (significance) defined in one of more “semantic contexts” (Long term and Short term).
That is, the nodes are clumped more closely (or sharing bg-color, or opaque, or …) depending on how closely they are related from a particular perspective.
== Summary ==
Same nodes (or the real objects and relations they represent) will ALWAYS exist in different contexts / scenarios. Which needs different map representations.
No context = no meaning = poor or no semantics.
// Rolf Lampa
3D (like thebrain software!) Google Image integration like in MindMeister (even closer integration than in Mindmeister) Some good timeline concept
Totally agree with @henrik regarding 3D. I think it will be a “must-have” in the future mind mapping software products.