Reflect exercies – Mind Mapping Tool

Garcia

Challenge & Selection

When setting up an extracurricular project as a student, one of the tools I used was mind  mapping. As a student group we had spent months to collect a large quantity of various data.  What we needed to do next was to arrive at common themes and patterns to be able to identify  the relevant solutions we were seeking. The goal was thus to move from the “what is” phase  to the “what if” phase in a creative, visual and engaging way.

Application

To apply the tool of mind mapping, we thought of two possible ways. On the one hand, we  could simply engage in a mind mapping session between ourselves, using the tools presented  by Garcia. On the other hand, we could invite other students to help us in the exercise.  We opted for the second approach for two major reasons. First, by inviting other students, who  had previously not been in touch with the project, we could void the selection bias each of us  would have had working on the collection of the available data for months prior. Second, these  new students gave us new insights and perspectives, which we did not think of before. To  organise the session in the most effective way, we prepared the collected data by printing out  pictures to visualise certain ideas or concerns that we collected. The participants then were  asked to look at those pictures and cluster them around common patterns on a white board.  We also equipped participants with sticky notes so that they could add additional ideas and  solutions which were not yet featured in the available data.

Insight & Approach

Organising the mind mapping workshop with fellow students really allowed us as a project  team to move on from the research stage to the phase were we could map out valuable insights  from the data we collected. This enabled us to identify possible solutions, which we had  previously overlooked or could not see amidst the large quantity of data we collected over the  months. Garcia’s guidance on how to organise a workshop was extremely helpful to  manage the session in a fun and engaging way. Interestingly, one of the outliers from the mind  mapping exercise eventually proved to be one of our strongest candidates for a workable  solution.

