Mind mapping vs. Venn diagrams

Posted by OutlinerBill
May 28, 2012 at 05:24 PM

I agree that most tools focus on presentation. Also as I grew up in a pre-digital, analog world

, I think I may be more closely wired to pen(cil) & paper than I’d like to admit for lightning brainstorming, although I prefer the brain-supercharging enabled by limitless digital multidimensionality and editability.

The closest I got to both (for me) was a Windows program called Axon Idea Processor. It’s designed for speed-of-thought capture, after-the-fact rearranging, and then extending into digitally enabled frontiers like simulation and 3d reach. It’s created by a developer in Singapore and you can see a gallery of possibilities at http://web.singnet.com.sg/~axon2000/showcase.htm.

I haven’t thought about this in quite some time as I seem to be leaving my windows laptop more and more behind as I live with my iDevices. Your initial scenario, however, reminded me of a model I’d built in Axon that was similar. If I recall, it was less a pyramid than a layered collection of primitive nodes at the bottom connecting up and aggregating to create composites in the layer above (the same primitive could be used in more than one composite), and then repeated up a couple of more layers. I believe I was architecting service layers, but can’t remember exactly.

In any case, maybe that’ll help (he used to have a free version with limited number of nodes so if you use Windows, you could try it out).

Good luck

Bill