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Types and Examples
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Think of them as pre-set, often-used patterns for organizing your thinking, for constructing your knowledge, for being able to share them with others.
This kind of metacognition, or thinking about thinking, gives us something to do with the enormous amount of information bombarding us. We can construct abstractpatterns to classify the information -- to store it in relevant groups. Then we can leave it there, that is, forget it, until we need it again.
Especially important is what doesn't quite fit the pattern, the anomaly, the incongruity, the inconsistency, the outlier. We can see the parts of every whole, the parts all working together. And we can see that whole as part of a larger whole.
We see cause and effect among the parts, among the parts and the whole. These aren't just collections of rocks in a drawer, they're a system that is interconnected and interdependent. Our product is manufactured. Our department makes decisions. Our books get balanced. When one part changes, it affects the other parts as well as the whole, which is in turn part of a larger whole: our supply chain, our company, our accountability to shareholders.
Then we do something so basic that it sets living things apart from nonliving. A rock just lies there. Living things note the anomalies and sense either threat or opportunity: predator or lunch. We, on the other hand, go around looking for problems. We see strengths and weaknesses in addition to threats and opportunities. How can we make it better, faster, cheaper, easier to use?
Visual tools let us analyze for ourselves and share our analyses with others.
Then we'll do something really human: cooperating with others, we'll make something new and different. The visual tools make it a little easier to do that well because they make is harder to fool ourselves and others. The visual tools make it a little easier to do it completely as well as a little harder to say that it's not our problem, to jump to conclusions, or to make faulty inferences.
Finally, we can fail forward. Like Thomas Edison, we can make lots of mistakes and call it learning from experience.
brainstorming your own projects
site maps: describing the structure of other people's Web sites and hypertexts.
decision-making
Identify and assess the external drivers of change
Managing Change's STEP - Social, Technological, Economic and Political Assessment
QuickMBA's PEST
Analysis
Selecting the most important changes to make
Evaluating the relative importance of different options -
Weighing the pros and cons of a decision
Looking at a decision from all points of view
Mind Tools' Grid Analysis
Selecting between good options.
Making a choice Where Many Factors Must be Balanced
Mind Tools' Decision Tree Analysis
Choosing Between Options by Projecting Likely Outcomes
Mind Tools' SWOT
Analysing Your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats
Mind Tools' Force Field Analysis
Understanding The Pressures For and Against Change
Mind Tools' Cost/Benefit Analysis
Seeing whether a change is worth making
Evaluating Quantitatively Whether to Follow a Course of Action
Although hierarchical maps are most common, many other kinds are possible. Muskingham College's Center for Advancement of Learning has examples of Information Organization including flow charts, flash cards, herringbone maps, spider maps, timelines, and matrices.
The AIM Lab at the University of Illinois has a page called Concept Maps giving tips on making them, examples of major types (some of which I used above), and a bank of real-life examples.
For a more detailed academic approach, try Concept Mapping: Soft Science or Hard Art? by William M.K. Trochim at Cornell.
A "gallery" of final concept maps from twenty projects ... partly to illustrate more examples of the process when used in a variety of subject areas and for different purposes, and partly for their aesthetic value alone.
The University of West Florida's Institute for Human and Machine Cognition has free Concept Mapping Software for you to download and try.
Construct, navigate, share, and criticize knowledge models represented as Concept Maps. The toolkit is platform independent and network enabled, allowing the users to build, and collaborate during the construction of concept maps with colleagues anywhere on the network, as well as, share and navigate through others' models distributed on servers throughout Internet.
The leading commercial mapping software, Inspiration, is published by Inspiration Software Inc. Download a demo of their latest version to see some of the differences. Is it worth paying over what you can get for free above?
Mind-Mapping for Writers
by Anne Bartlett
Ordering ideas in this way allows for speed and ease, and because it follows the brain's natural way of doing things, it is highly efficient. Once you have the basic information down, you can edit your map, reorder the topics, highlight important aspects, draw connecting lines between branches and add numbers to sort out priorities. This part of the process should not be hurried either -- this "coloring in" phase, while slower, is still a settling and sorting process.
Geography
Education: Mapping the world by heart
Colorado
Springs Utilities' Xeriscape
Demonstration Garden
informative
article from MindTools: MindMaps
The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and
How To Construct Them
by Joseph D. Novak, Cornell University
Getting Started with Cognitive Mapping
by Fran Ackermann, Colin Eden and Steve Cropper, 1993-1996
Providing help with structuring messy or complex data for problem solving, assisting the interview process by increasing understanding and generating agendas, and managing large amounts of qualitative data from documents.
An
Introduction to Brand/Perceptual Mapping
by Dr. Marshall Rice
Schulich School of Business, York University
maps and graphic representations of the geographies of the new electronic territories of the Internet, the World-Wide Web and other emerging Cyberspaces
note
especially the Atlas' web site maps
Paul
Kahn's Dynamic Diagrams site and
print book Mapping
Web sites: digital media design
Martin Dodge's Map
of the Month archive at Mappa.Mundi Magazine
large map of one issue of The
Naked PC newsletter
Oxygen.com
site map
Beck's map
of London's Underground from The Subway Page, maps from
Amsterdam to Zurich
The
Brain's WebBrain
An application of the MediaLab mapping applet is at Interwad, another Dutch company. On the top left, the Map link worked quickly and shows the idea. However, the Surf link is the one you want. It takes a long time to load, but it's worth it.
Site Map
Usability
by Jakob Nielsen
Alertbox, January 6, 2002
Most site maps fail to convey multiple levels of the site's
information architecture. In usability tests, users often overlook site maps or
can't find them. Complexity is also a problem: a map should be a map, not a
navigational challenge of its own.
One of the oldest hypertext usability principles is to visualize the structure
of the information space to help users understand where they can go. On today's
Web, site maps are a common approach to facilitating navigation. Unfortunately,
they are often not very successful at it. Recommendations:
1. Link name and placement ("Site Map," prominent, on every page)
2. Navigation (use normal links, avoid extra clicks, be complete)
3. Relationship of site map to the site (complement main navigation, make
hierarchy clear, provide overview not relationships)
4. Design (cross-browser, visited colors, minimize graphics/scrolling/load time,
make it clean)
5. Content (include all areas, including About and Search, clarify links that
take user to areas with their own structure)
6. Alphabetical Indices (specify what it includes, cross reference, provide
context)
Do they use well what they sell? Sitemaps of companies that make site-mapping software:
ELSOP: Electronic Software
Publishing Corporation
This long computer-generated sitemap is annotated with labels,
symbols, numbers, icons, etc. For $300, Elsop will sell you the software that
created the map.
Rocketfuel.com, whose home page is a
menu-style sitemap.
This company also sells, for $90, the software that creates the menu-type sitemap used on the home page.
HTML
Indexer site index
An alphabetical index instead of a sitemap? Why not? Iis an index a sitemap? The company sells the indexing software for $229.95 to register the downloaded demo or $249.95 plus shipping for the CD-ROM.
eMindMaps.com - $29.99
Organize your thoughts quickly. Be more clear. Replace your sloppy handwritten notes with attractive, well-structured maps. ... Have more fun watching your thoughts turn into brilliant ideas.
MindManager - $139
Take a tour or test the free trial version. Check out the list of links to other mind mapping resources.
Mindjet - eMindMaps
software screenshot
As a company, as well as a group of like-thinking individuals, Mindjet is dedicated to designing Visual Thinking products that work naturally with the human mind, complementing the software we were all born with. We believe working with and sharing complex information can be enjoyable, stimulating and even stress reducing if done this way.
CoCo Systems' VisiMap software screenshot and 30-day free download
It graphically records, structures and clarifies thoughts and ideas in such a way that they can be used, reused and then effectively communicated. ... VisiMap adds efficient data entry, automatic layout, striking presentation, powerful map structuring, manipulation, printing and integration features, and extensive import and export facilities to create an invaluable asset that produces visual solutions to all kinds of business and personal applications.
Banxia's Decision Explorer software screenshot
When you need to gain an in-depth understanding of complex problems, Decision Explorer helps you make a comprehensive 'qualitative' model. You build a 'map' which can then be explored and analysed to help develop strategy, decision making and business problems.
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