They don't have to pick my brain or engage in 20-questions exercises. Chances are that they will find things that I've overlooked simply because everything I did is laid out in a readable format and their thought process is different than mine. Better still, I can then show my map to someone else and see if their thought process would have organized the topic in a similar way. It's simply a documented expression of my thought process and provides an easier way to create a record of the checks and double-checks that I use when iterating and refining something. That's how I use mind mapping tools for myself. Whatever you do, it's ugly, and only gets worse when you do a "final" pass through your map to ask "did I forget anything?" and realize you forgot 3 additional items. If you were using paper or a whiteboard maybe you resort to 0-point font to squeeze in the missing item or do an off-page link. No problem, you simply plop it right into your map and the existing items (nodes) move to make room for it. The beauty of mind mapping tools is that at some point you say "I'm done and I've thought of everything." But then you realize you forgot one more thing, say a compass or GPS. Maybe you want to make sure the tent poles are in the tent bag and that you get ice for the cooler. Now repeat the same thought process for each of the new items you've added. so add those items as nodes connected to your central topic. Your central topic node is "camping." Now start thinking "what do I need to get ready to prepare for my camping trip?" Tent, cooler, maps, permits, bug spray. For example, say you are planning to go camping this weekend. There are plenty of how-to sites about mind mapping but you can probably get the hang of it better simply by creating one around a central topic. Paper and pen have some of the same issues as whiteboards and doesn't work so great for large groups and remote members. There's also dry pens and people whose handwriting is illegible. Sure, take a picture of the board, or override the DNE order. Whiteboards are much better, but what do you do when you run out of board space? Then there's the boards where someone writes "Do Not Erase!" on half of the whiteboard. You can indent to show parent-child hierarchy but how do you show a child item that derives from more than one parent in a simple list of text. A text editor is constrained to a linear list of items. You can do similar activities with a text editor, spreadsheet, whiteboard, or paper and pencil but each of these has constraints (claptrap) that will at some point get in your way and break your train of thought or stall the collaborating group. What I find particularly useful about mind mapping tools like MindNode is the ability to simply throw items (nodes) on the map without worrying too much about the organization of the document (map) itself because it's easy to move things around and create more space. I've used mind mapping extensively for brainstorming, information gathering, and planning around subject matter, topics, projects, etc., both for self organization to collect my thoughts and when collaborating with a group of people to collect the thoughts of the entire group in one document. What sort of work would you be doing where you would need such an app? Apple revives its App Store Christmas sales like they used to do and MindNode 5 is on the list. Since MindNode 4 is still very desirable I'll wait to see how XMind does on iOS before jumping on MindNode 5. but I think it is getting closer because I had a TestFlight invitation for it this past summer. What's been missing from XMind is native iOS support but it has been in the "coming soon" state for a while. Interestingly I had no JVM issues at all with the lightweight Ubuntu MATE which means it should run on RPi3. Some Linux distros require some JVM reconfiguration for XMind to run. Less desirable has been XMind's Java/JVM dependency, but on modern hardware and Windows and macOS it's not an issue. I do use the export to PDF and MS Office formats with XMind. I love XMind's drill-down navigation and presentation mode which makes it very easy to create hierarchical maps of maps. MindJet's product is good and very popular in corporate settings but it's too closed when it comes to import/export. Of the mind mapping programs that I've used including MindJet MindManager, IThoughtsHD, MindNode, and XMind I like MindNode the best on iOS but I find that I still like XMind the best overall because it's available on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
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