Mind Mapping

It is very difficult  to find yourself as an imperfect human being in a role of giving hope to

other imperfect beings especially those who find themselves in circumstances far beyond their

comprehension. I work with with one of the key population who we refer to as prisoners. Where

I work, I deal with prisoners from all walks of live, some are fathers, juveniles, foreigners,

criminals, some are awaiting trials and some are psychitric patients. It takes more than passion

and hard work to listen to this diverse group and try to make them look at life in a different

light than their current situations. It is even more difficult when language is a barrier and then

you got to call the third person who is not even qualified or trained to interpret. What has

always intriqued me is the ability to help someone come up with a better solution without being

judgemental or prejudice.

Selection

I have leant to use mind mapping to get through to my clients who are prisoners(inmates) and

their custodians(prison officers) whom are at times judgemental to their clients and illtreat

them. I have not always known the in depth of mind mapping but the little knowledge I knew

was that it makes complex issues easy to breakdown and remember since it uses a lot of

drawing which stick to the mind. It further uses partens to search for depth hidden insights

which sways one into treating something complex into a simple manner.

Application

Coming from a background of giving group and individual counselling to students and teachers

whom were already used to the idea of counselling was easy however giving the same to prison

enviroment seem a bit complex and it was further met with resentment and aparthy. So for me

to permeate the idea of counselling I needed to understand what was their idea of counselling

in contrast to what I know and for that i used mind mapping. I took both the prison officers and

the inmates through what I believe to be counselling at separate times in contrast to what they

know counselling to be. I drew a square box with defination of counselling and branches that

support counselling and I drew a circle opposite the square and wrote counselling in prison. I

then asked the grounp to come up with what their understanding of prison counselling is in

contrast to counselling in general and to  link the similarities together. They also came up with

what worked and what didnt work at the end of the presentation. The pictorials made the

presentation fascinating and simple to engage everyone  and at the end we had a common

thinking.

Mind mapping in working with the above two groups was helpful since it gathered the current

trends and understanding of what counselling is to both groups and it further readressed issues

of now that we know what counselling is what is it that could be done to generate common

themes that will include all prisoners. It made everyone to think out of the box which is named

design criteria in Design thinking processs and it paved way for new interventions which were

owned not by myself but by the prison officers and prisoners.

Insights and Approach

To me the example of art gallery and yard sale reflects on breaking ice by congregating all the

stakeholders in couselling together to reflect on what they are experiencing in so far as

counselling is concerned. They were honest in defining their current realities of counselling

and they clustered them into thems of what is working and what is not working for them. Mind

mapping is indeed an innovative way into making people start thinking and opening up about

the trends that they are experiencing and it further give insights into easily mapping issues into

themes and what doesnt fall within the given criteria, yet is valuable in creating what could

work as opposse to what was. The mind mapping is colouful, connect ideas and enable people

to be imaginative which is the core of Innovative design and thinking. This is a tool we can

adopt in learning and understanding.

It is with no doubt that mind mapping in design thinking is a tool to reckon with, however

having gone through all this module of Design thinking and Innovation, I am rest assured that

alone mind mapping is not enough therefore if coupled with story telling and visualization, I

will be able to reach the many hearts of the key population I work with in building a better me

and better us.

