Reflection – Mind Mapping

Challenge & Selection

The one tool that has proved useful to me time and time again has been the mind mapping tool. As I am still only a high school graduate, I have yet to explore any other design tool practically and have used mind mapping only because it makes studying literature all the more convenient. Mind mapping is to present organized and linked information through diagrams and is particularly useful studying literature where themes and motifs can easily be connected together to a primary character through the use of mind maps. I had not heard of mind mapping till our literature teacher introduced it to us and had us experiment with different ways of presentation and decide what works best for us. Through these experiments I came to realize just how vital mind mapping would actually prove to be over the course of my student life and beyond.

Application

We were introduced to this tool through example and demonstration. The literary text we were studying at the time - William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night – was thoroughly explained to us through a long winding mind map, in terms of its various themes and relationships between the characters. What made it so convenient for us was that we were to first focus on one aspect regarding the text; perhaps the complex feelings between Cesario and Olivia, the perplexing internal conflict Viola had to keep dealing with, or the theme of disguise itself and we were to link that one aspect to anything and everything else that could possibly to connected to the focal aspect and to do this through visuals and self-reflecting diagrams proved to be a huge success within our class. Firstly, we were excited to present information to our future selves in a way that was visually stimulating rather than plain and dull notes. Secondly, no matter how fancy your notes were guaranteed to be, everyone would still write them down in a uniform and linear manner. With mind mapping, we were able to incorporate our own preferences and subsequently, a bit of our own selves into our mind maps. This personalization may seem trivial or as a waste of time but ultimately we realized that we were able to retain much more information by putting our own touches in our mind maps. If I liked to use ovals to write my themes in, my friend liked to use squares. Through this diagrammatic standard, we were able to more efficiently remember what my mind map had said about a particular theme due to the decorative stars I had made and what a fellow class mate’s mind map had said due to the fact that it was wrong information but highly decorated and all of us remembered the laugh we had about it and the time afterward that we spent correcting the information collectively. The test that was taken some time later proved to me the importance of mind mapping in my studies as I had never before remembered as much information before a test and could easily recall all the linked quotes and themes in my various and thoroughly visual mind maps.

Insight & Approach

My takeaway from using mind mapping, especially after learning about it from a design perspective through this course, would be that it is definitely a versatile and fully functional tool that could be very effectively used in a number of different fields wherever information can be linked together and briefly summarized. It completely changed my perspective on note taking; something that I thought was a mostly stagnant way of collecting information until I started mind mapping which is how I learned that there are better and more reliable ways in which information can be presented and through the various forms of presentation, it can be effectively recalled as well. This, of course, works for students like me who are doing their best to prepare for exams and tests most of the time and need to remember things and for people in design who need to retain different ideas and concepts in order to better themselves in their field.

An alternative approach I would do with mind mapping would be to use it in a work space like teaching more often. If I were to become a teacher in the future, be that of any academic subject, I would strive to incorporate mind mapping in my classes and encourage as many students to try it for themselves as well

