Inspiration Compared to Mind Mapping Programs (and a suggestion for outlining programs)

< Next Message | Back to archived message list | Previous Message >

Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 2900

Posted by srdiamond15
2005-03-06 14:12:03

There’s been discussion unfavorably comparing the ergonomics of diagramming in Inspiration to the mind mapping programs aimed at business users as opposed to educators and students.

Inspiration’s diagrammer is not techincally a mindmapping program (‘concept mapping program’is the generic), as it departs substantially from the guidelines Buzan set out for would-be acolytes. It differs in at least these respects: 1) you can have more than a single main topic in Inspiration; 2) A topic can have multiple parents (the diagramming equivalent of cloning in an outline—in fact something that seems intuitively problematic in an outline is standard practice in concept mapping, cloning to make a child the parent of its parent, which is just a biconditional arrow in a diagram); and 3) making a connection is accomplished as adding a connector instead of dragging the item to the parent.

#1 and particularly #2 are without qualification advantages of the Inspiration approach over the Buzan approach, at least conceptually, but obviously not aesthetically, and I think many of the problems users making comparisons report are the result of this added complexity in an Inspiration diagram, or if not the direct result, might be the result of having to allow for the possibility of multiple connections.

#3, on the other hand, at least for me is an ergonomic advantage of the Buzan-derived programs. It would be possible to combine the mindmappers approach to creating links with Inspiration’s multiple linkages by adding control keys to dragging if you don’t want the new link added to the old instead of replacing it. But while I prefer the ergonomics of the (extended) mindmapping approach, the Inspiration approach is arguably more transparent and intuitive, as anything involving control keys loses some transparency.

Here’s a suggested feature for outlining programs that may provide what I see as the principal advantage of mindmapping—abstracting from ordering and minimizing the effect of hierarchy perceptually. (At least to me, a mind map can more easily by perceived as a flat collection, because it is easier to ignore an arrow than an indent.) The suggestion is a command to level the hierarchy (something I recall seeing in some outliner, but don’t recall where); coupled with a command to randomize the order, easily reiterated with a key stroke.

Stephen R. Diamond

Back to archived message list