The Mind Map that we have been primarily using in this tutorial has a number of shortcomings in regards to the best use of Mind Mapping concepts.
Visual improvements
We could do a number of things to make this Mind Map better from a visual perspective, some things that may help would be:
| 1. | More images - either from the graphics library, or from the Internet or other sources |
| 2. | More adornments for showing the meaning of the branches |
| 3. | Different branch shapes - we have been using just line and rectangle branches - it would make it interesting to use oval branches and FlexiBranches where appropriate too. |
| 4. | Use different fonts for different words, to emphasize them, as well as using different text colors. |
| 5. | Better use of color for the branches. |
| 6. | More link lines, attached graphics, and boundaries where appropriate. |
| 7. | Try different background images to make the whole Mind Map look more interesting - not something too overpowering though, especially if it is tiled across the whole Mind Map canvas. |
Obviously you don't want to overdo any of this, as it is best to have a Mind Map that your brain enjoys looking at. It's sort of like some people when they discover fonts on a computer, every document they create has about 20 different fonts in it, and it looks terrible. So use the features to enhance the look and turn it into a work of art.
Layout improvements
One of the themes of Mind Mapping is to leverage the power of association and extension in your brain. If you have a complete sentence or phrase on a branch, your brain is happy with that and stops thinking of ways to extend the idea, or different ways ideas can be linked.
So it is best to look at the intention of the words, and break them down into linked concepts that will leave the ideas open for further addition of other branches, and thinking about the different ways they can be linked.
For example, we will take the following branch from our Mind Map:
Thinking about the first branch, "Review the record" we really are talking about the history of the problem.
Then for the branch "Find out what rules and customs apply" we are dealing with the environment around the problem.
For the last two branches, we bring in the "people" aspects of the issue.
As soon as we start to reorganize along these lines, we find that it opens up new lines of thinking for us, so once we have gone through the reorganization process, we may have something like this:
Now when we look at this, we will see History, and start thinking about when this may have happened before. Instead of thinking about "Review the record" as if there was only one record, we would be likely to be open to thinking about all the other times that this may have happened either to us or to other people or businesses. With the link to records, we are opening up possibilities of all sorts of historical records, not just our records. This may include our internal factory or business records, talking to other business owners of similar businesses, finding out about similar things that may relate to other businesses, finding out information from newspapers, libraries, movies, documentaries, training courses, etc.
We could go further than what we have done already and add some or all of those things as branches, but the main thing to notice is that by breaking down the sentence into the intention, we have now opened up a myriad of new possibilities.
Similarly with the Environment branch, we now start thinking about things to do with all aspects of the environment around the problem - were there specific incidents or decisions that led to the problem arising? What constitutes normal or exceptional situations? What are the critical factors for the existence of the problem? What things do we need to comply with in this situation and why? How have things been done in the past, and were those actions correct?
And so it goes on. Single words with linkages between them are much more powerful than sentences - try it out on your Mind Maps.
Happy Mind Mapping!