Reflection – Mind Mapping

Challenge & Selection

I study at the cooperative state university in Mannheim, Germany. We often have to work in  groups and sometimes, caused by the various types of personalities and specializations, the  group members have different perspectives and approaches to solve a problem.

Especially under time pressure it’s necessary to quickly get a good overview about the  current situation and to highlight similarly the consensuses to have a solid fundament to  work on. The mind mapping tool doesn’t require a lot of explanation because it works highly  intuitive.

Application

First, every single team member is asked to do a short brainstorm on a very creative and  individual way to think about the whole topic. After this, everyone asks himself the key  question “what is“, to think more concretely about the current circumstances and writes his  thoughts down on a “post it” notes.  While not telling the others about these to not  influence them.

Afterwards each member explains the notes they took to the group and put it on a large  wall. The ones which are similar to previous ones should not be explained again and just put  on the wall without comment. Clusters are to be formed ordered by the content of the  notes.

The “post it” notes with exceptional thoughts are also very important and should be put  next to the boarders of the clusters.

At least we search for a title which describes every cluster, write it on another “post it”  preferring a different color and put it next to the clusters. But before we continue with the  next phase, we have a short discussion about the result to concretize it further, inspire each  other and get new insights – sometimes there are new notes to be created.

Finally there is a representative and visual picture of the situation and this segues to the  second phase: the question “what’s possible”.

Insight & Approach

From conducting this exercise I have learned that there is so much that has to follow after  the mind mapping tool. In the past we often stopped with the mind map and tried to build  over solution right on top of it. But now I know best practices to follow up in a productive  manner, this should lead to a much higher success rate.

I think mind mapping is a design thinking tool which fits very well for human-centered and  creative analytics. It is a bracing and inspiring method, so it can motivate teams to work on a  structured, targeted and concentric way, this leads to great solutions.

