ThinkingTools, softwares which helps in ThinkingProcess

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Posted by bartb
Feb 18, 2021 at 03:51 AM

!!!! ... oh my ..... another fun rabbit hole to explore!!!! :- )

jsamlarose wrote:
This might be of use?
>https://github.com/brettkromkamp/awesome-knowledge-management
>Lots of thinking about knowledge management, but the apps/tools list
>should offer a solid starting point.
> >As others have acknowledged, this sounds like quite the undertaking.
>It’d be interesting to see even the beginnings of a taxonomy of thinking
>tools. Three categories for thinking tools are (for my own purposes)
>are:
>- linear thinking (note-taking in an app like Drafts)
>- structured visual thinking (hierarchical mind-mapping tools like
>iThoughts, and non-hierarchical knowledge graphs like Kinopio)
>- loose/freehand visual thinking (sketch/drawing apps like Concepts)
> >Even this isn’t particularly cast-iron; plenty of tools sit on the
>borders and cross the divides…

Posted by jsamlarose
Feb 19, 2021 at 09:20 PM

Ha! Yes— that one’s particularly fun (and far-reaching…) ;)

bartb wrote:
!!!! ... oh my ..... another fun rabbit hole to explore!!!! :- )
> >jsamlarose wrote:
>This might be of use?
>>https://github.com/brettkromkamp/awesome-knowledge-management
>>Lots of thinking about knowledge management, but the apps/tools list
>>should offer a solid starting point.
>>
>>As others have acknowledged, this sounds like quite the undertaking.
>>It’d be interesting to see even the beginnings of a taxonomy of
>thinking
>>tools. Three categories for thinking tools are (for my own purposes)
>>are:
>>- linear thinking (note-taking in an app like Drafts)
>>- structured visual thinking (hierarchical mind-mapping tools like
>>iThoughts, and non-hierarchical knowledge graphs like Kinopio)
>>- loose/freehand visual thinking (sketch/drawing apps like Concepts)
>>
>>Even this isn’t particularly cast-iron; plenty of tools sit on the
>>borders and cross the divides…

Posted by jsamlarose
Feb 19, 2021 at 09:33 PM

Thinking further: I wonder if the (very) rough categorisation I put forward resonates with anyone else, or if anyone might offer alternative views? I know there are some pretty obvious and messy points of intersection, which makes me wonder whether this is more of a Venn diagram than a sliding scale…

I guess outliners would sit somewhere in the linear, hierarchical category, though Dynalist would skew towards the structured visual category, since it does offer a mind-map view. And Roam (and its many competitors and clones) would be just another flavour of structured visual thinking?

Muse (https://museapp.com/) feels like it deserves a mention in any conversation about thinking tools…

Posted by steveylang
Dec 3, 2021 at 06:17 PM

Muse is a very interesting app with apparently a lot of thought and design put into it (looking over their blog.) A Muse Mac app is planned for next year, and I will look at that closely. There is also a very interesting app in development called Heptabase (heptabase.com) that offers similar spatial organization of information but with more emphasis on text.

I much prefer ‘spatial organization’ of information in the initial creation and planning stages of a project or idea. Pencil and paper work great for me there, of course digital apps offer much more functionality but only if the interface is frictionless (which is where many apps fail for me.)

The best digital version for me has been Scapple, which is as bare bones as it is easy to use. The only additional feature I wish it had was notes, so that I could jot down additional information about an item without cluttering up the page. I have found Mindnode also to have a very frictionless UI, and it offers not only text notes but both iOS and Mac apps. There are a lot of great mind map apps out there, but most stick to the single central node with branches model which is not really how I do it.

Finally, while I love these sorts of spatial/visual apps they don’t seem very practical as an all-in-on solution. But OPML is a great way for transferring info into an outliner/PIM.

jsamlarose wrote:
Thinking further: I wonder if the (very) rough categorisation I put
>forward resonates with anyone else, or if anyone might offer alternative
>views? I know there are some pretty obvious and messy points of
>intersection, which makes me wonder whether this is more of a Venn
>diagram than a sliding scale…
> >I guess outliners would sit somewhere in the linear, hierarchical
>category, though Dynalist would skew towards the structured visual
>category, since it does offer a mind-map view. And Roam (and its many
>competitors and clones) would be just another flavour of structured
>visual thinking?
> >Muse (https://museapp.com/) feels like it deserves a mention in any
>conversation about thinking tools…
> >jsamlarose wrote:
>This might be of use?
>>https://github.com/brettkromkamp/awesome-knowledge-management
>>Lots of thinking about knowledge management, but the apps/tools list
>>should offer a solid starting point.
>>
>>As others have acknowledged, this sounds like quite the undertaking.
>>It’d be interesting to see even the beginnings of a taxonomy of
>thinking
>>tools. Three categories for thinking tools are (for my own purposes)
>>are:
>>- linear thinking (note-taking in an app like Drafts)
>>- structured visual thinking (hierarchical mind-mapping tools like
>>iThoughts, and non-hierarchical knowledge graphs like Kinopio)
>>- loose/freehand visual thinking (sketch/drawing apps like Concepts)
>>
>>Even this isn’t particularly cast-iron; plenty of tools sit on the
>>borders and cross the divides…

Posted by Dr Andus
Dec 5, 2021 at 12:37 PM

steveylang wrote:
>I much prefer ‘spatial organization’ of information in the initial
>creation and planning stages of a project or idea. Pencil and paper work
>great for me there, of course digital apps offer much more functionality
>but only if the interface is frictionless (which is where many apps fail
>for me.)
> >The best digital version for me has been Scapple

I agree that when it comes to speed of capturing and developing ideas, analysing problems etc., nothing beats pen and paper (I like to go for A3 size, but have used a large scroll of wrapping paper as well for really large-scale planning).

The challenge with spatial organisation digitally is that spatial software (such as Onenote) works better for analysing and mapping a single issue, rather than for organising a large database and visualising aspects of that database. Roam’s visual graph becomes pretty useless fairly soon as well.

The only workable solution I’ve come across so far has been the semantic zoom of Plectica (though it’s still not a panacea, as explained below).

Plectica has remained my go-to solution for visually analysing and modelling smaller scale problems (taking over from VUE, which was my previous tool for this), as it’s fairly quick to create nodes and connect them.

The ease of embedding nodes within nodes is also very helpful (as eventually everything is part of something else, one way or another, so it’s always helpful to be able to easily embed one node in another).

The semantic zoom then helps maintain the big picture, while easily allowing one to zoom in and work on a detail.

But even with Plectica there comes a point where you’d want to separate issues into different maps once it grows too big, as I’m not sure how it would accommodate a single giant database in a single map.

Perhaps someone one day will combine Plectica’s implementation of the semantic zoom with supporting a Roam type database, so that one can build specific visualisations without having to create a new file or database every time.

I was kind of able to do such analyses with ConnectedText’s Navigator feature, but it has its own limitations (and is sadly no longer developed).

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