When analysts are presented with a question and/or an intelligence need, they often jump right into the information collection phase. However, once the collection begins, sometimes the analyst comes to a roadblock: What exactly am I looking for? This is where the concept of mind mapping could be put to great use for analysts. Taking time before the information collection phase to create a mind map helps to both visualize the concept, and find the areas that need be researched. Referring to the mind map during the information collection phase can also help analyst to spot areas that are lacking in information, areas that need to be researched more thoroughly. This is a major flaw that may occur when jumping right into collection, and is easily spotted with a conceptual model.
There are a variety of mind mapping tools available on the internet. The following are some of the best applications I reviewed:
Bubbl.us
Bubbl.us is one of the simpler mind mapping applications out there. Concepts and ideas are organized in bubbles, and the bubbles can be linked with each other. The diagrams can be scaled for extremely complex or extremely basic models. Bubbl.us is a great program for quickly organizing your ideas, and getting them written down.
Vyew
Vyew contains numerous features: documents, images, hyperlinks, and text can all be organized into mind maps. The premier feature of this application is it’s collaboration abilities. Multiple users can edit mind maps and work on whiteboards simultaneously. The collaboration features in Vyew make it invaluable for group projects and analysis.
MindMeister
Mindmeister is easily the most developed of the mind mapping applications available on the internet. While simple to use, it holds a number of powerful and flexible tools that put it above the competition. It also boasts a collaboration feature, flawlessly allowing as many users as you wish to edit the map simultaneously. MindMeister offers a free basic version, with paid plans offering additional features and more storage.
WikiMindMap
While WikiMindMap doesn’t allow you to create your own mind maps, it is an extremely useful to. It has a single function – turning Wikipedia articles into mindmaps. It is a quick way to get an overview of a topic, and can show connections that may have not been found through more conventional means of research.
4 comments:
I don't agree that a mind map is the same as a conceptual model. I think that some sort of knowledge mapping technique (and they come with a variety of names, including mind-mapping, knowledge mapping and even concept mapping) can be useful in visualizing a conceptual model but I don't think the two are synonymous.
To me, a conceptual model is a useful way of thinking about something. It does address the important elements and sub-elemnents of a problem or issue and it does highlight the relationships between those elements and sub-elements which is, perhaps, why conceptual modeling is so often associated with these visualization techniques, but I could see a number of ways of actually presenting the model.
One of the most useful questions I think you can ask when building a model is "What kinds of information do I need to answer this question?" I know that there are some that teach this as part of the process and it makes a lot of sense to me. I also think that, at the end of the process, the failure to get good facts for areas that are critical to your analysis goes, at a minimum, toward the level of analytic confidence in a particular estimate.
I am also interested in your picture. Where did you get it and what do you think it shows? A little bit of discussion and attribution here would be helpful.
The online resources are great! Many thanks!
If you haven't already, you may want to look at MindManager as well: http://www.mindjet.com/us/.
It's quite good, and you can demo it free for one month.
Here is something hot off the press from this morning: http://tinyurl.com/yw26vm
It's a new free desktop sharing tool called Yugma that is tightly integrated with Skype. I tried it. Really quite amazing. Fast, easy. Definitely worth a good look.
Another good collaborative web-based mind mapping tool that might be worth looking at comapping.com.
Its a bit different from the remaining tools in that it mind maps left to right which provides a much better overview of the semantic structure. In addition it has a auto- layout algorithm which makes the navigation through a map ten time easier then a traditional tools. This works really well when collaborating with users
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