Reflection – Mind Mapping

Challenge & Selection

I am a Web Site designer and I need to build a website for the students at my  university. The aim is to provide every resource possible and make it  accessible to everyone. I was researching multiple websites of various  institutes to design a better one for the users who are also my peers.

Application

In order to come up with an outline of what features the website should I  used Mind Mapping, it is an ideal tool for effectively accessing natural  creativity and harnessing that creativity for effective problem solving.

Our brain starts with one centre idea and builds branches of thoughts that  can be used as a base for other derivative ideas. The best way to build a  website and gather information about features on the website: You should  explore other websites which are built for a similar purpose. At this point, there  are so many guides on how to design and what you want to include in your  website. However, it is important that you also keep in mind that you look a  website as a user not only as a person who is designing it. Therefore, you  should ask your users about what they want in a website.

Insight & Approach

I started with a software called C-maps which allows you to build mind maps  on a computer. This allowed me to keep sight of what I wanted to build and  achieve instead of going through multiple paths. In the end, I had a mind  map combining all different features and resources that the students on my  website: ideas, possible layout of the home page, and finally ended with an  extremely complex mind map. My next job was to consolidate all the ideas  and gather all the resources, which could lead to feasible and working  website.

As I started working on a test page in order to see what “Wows”, I have  realised that it very difficult to build all of it by myself.

This course made me see mind mapping as a tool in a new way. When I've  done it before it was really a messy draft with no organised structure but now,  I can prepare ahead present my ideas clearly. I went to the Local Tech Club  and the community there was willing to help me in building the website after  looking at the mind map everyone was able to understand what is needed,  what works, what wows!

