Brainstorming tools

Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 8, 2021 at 05:03 PM

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>any outliner should help brainstorm like a pen to paper

I’m with Steve on this one.

The main limitation I’ve found with using software for brainstorming was the speed of data entry or making connections (for this reason pen and paper tends to be king).

I like to use WorkFlowy though for brainstorming (if it’s about coming up with ideas and needing to structure them), as I find it very fast and easy to structure and move things around with keyboard shortcuts. Plus now it’s easy to drop screenshots and images into it and mark text up with colour and tag (categorise) things.

But the Brainstorm software Steve mentioned had some other tricks up its sleeve (though I could never get into it myself either for some reason).

If I need to come up with a concept map or flowchart, I’d first use pen and paper, but if speed is not an issue (if it’s more of a slower, analytical process of figuring out and modelling a process or a structure), I would use Plectica directly.

Actually mind mapping software can also work well for brainstorming. Used to use Freeplane for this, though haven’t touched it for a few years, so don’t know how good or fast it still is.