Nontrivial Exercises

Mind Mapping - Information In Context

Previously, I introduced the concept of mind mapping as a more efficient means of communicating certain types of information compared to traditional written prose. Maps contain information arranged visually to help quickly convey a message or data that is categorized, grouped or otherwise related.

Today I want to talk about what I’ve found to be the most succinct way to characterize the value of maps: Information in Context. Usually, when we want to capture or communicate information, we implicitly capture the context of the information along with the actual data.

For example, when you attend your boss’s weekly staff meeting, if you take notes, you would (hopefully) write a heading at the top of the paper indicating “Staff Meeting, 1/16/06” or something similar. Then, when you came across that piece of paper later, you would know to categorize the information you wrote down as having come from that meeting.

At a much lower level, most other information has specific contexts, or relationships, to other information. When you make a grocery list, the obvious context is the grocery store. Without understanding the list of items represents things you specifically need to buy, and by when you need to buy them, the list is of little value.

When you write down an action you need to take, it only fully makes sense when you understand who gave you the action, when they gave it to you, and why. Knowing part of the discussion that took place beforehand may also help give more meaning to the action and allow you to meet the complete intent of the action.

How do mind maps help communicate contexts?

By providing visual relationships between elements of information, mind maps can clearly and efficiently show not only specific data, but how data relates to other data – in other words, the context of the data. It is easy to visualize a grocery list in the form of a traditional list and a map:

grocery list:

• milk
• eggs
• potatoes
• cheese
• juice

Now, there is not much advantage to having a grocery list as a map vs. a simple bulleted list, except that the map is perhaps easier to read quickly.

Let’s look at the example of an action item that you recorded from a meeting. You may write the notes like this:

Project developments

2 projects (Seattle and Portland) did not complete in December

• (1) revenue will not be recognized until Q1 2006
• (2) customer responsible for delay
• (3) action - Sean, engage Northwest region leader, identify action to improve customers’ readiness for future projects (report on action in next week’s meeting) 

This list is simple and straightforward enough. You can see the main topic of discussion and the sub-points hat led up to the action item.

Now consider the same notes in the form of a map (click the thumbnail for a larger image):

Both the written form and the map again contain the same words. Both forms contain contextual information –  relationships between the notes. However, the map shows the contextual relationships in a clear visual and spatial manner.

There is a much higher information density with maps, yet they are usually clearer and easier to read than other forms of lists or writing.

In my next post, I’ll give another example of information in context and the simple yet powerful manner that maps can communicate an idea.