Mind mapping as a tool for design thinking

Challange

Have you ever created a website with your design team for an archeological expedition in Crimea? No? Me  too, but then one day a customer comes and gives you this challenge. By the way, I am 20 years old and my  professional way as a graphic designer began just three years ago. That's why creating a website using  special programs and skills plus having such an unusual task drove me mad at first, but then I realized, how  my team and I could grow as specialists so we began to work.

Selection

All creative processes usually start with theme research. Here the most useful tool to organize the group of  people, to make the process more engaging, to make our minds work together and faster is mind mapping.  As I understand, it is a reflection of all your thoughts, dreams, connections and ideas from the head on the  sheet of paper. It allows you to understand your feelings about the problem and structure it. Consequently,  all your colleagues can understand you and try to develop it. As I have watched the video about steps for  mind mapping, I decided, that it would perfectly fit all of us, who were not aware of archeology. So the  perfect solution was to organize a meeting with the specialist and try to make our mind map together- our  skill plus their knowledge. To draw some easy schemes and add stickers as a good way of communication  between two different social groups.

Application

To create a perfect website we made two mind maps: one to specify the look of the site, its appearance, and  a character, and the second one to understand the mechanics and the way of the visitor. At first, we create  three categories named "character", "impression" and "style". Then we asked our clients to write three  adjectives on the stickers and add them on a board with these categories. That's how we found out the main  features of the site we should think of. Nextly we all together made another map imaging that we wanted to  participate in an expedition. So we found some troubles with the clarity and the simplicity of the site  structure. So we got some questions to be solved. Looking back on this experiment, I can say, that it was a  positive educational process and the mind mapping tool led us to see a different side of our job and learned  us to listen to each other,

Insight

I assume the most heartbreaking insight was (after the video I was really confused) to understand that your  mind maps probably won't help you because it's correlated only with your thoughts and experience, not  your customers and clients. If one talks about this specific challenge, I understand, that all people have  different views on the style, character, and mechanics. So mind mapping was a great tool to summarize all  expectations, highlight the most important, and delete the wrong ones. As for the more broad understanding  of design thinking, I learned that all solutions for "very difficult" problems start with easy steps.

Mind mapping as a tool for design thinking

Challange

Have you ever created a website with your design team for an archeological expedition in Crimea? No? Me  too, but then one day a customer comes and gives you this challenge. By the way, I am 20 years old and my  professional way as a graphic designer began just three years ago. That's why creating a website using  special programs and skills plus having such an unusual task drove me mad at first, but then I realized, how  my team and I could grow as specialists so we began to work.

Selection

All creative processes usually start with theme research. Here the most useful tool to organize the group of  people, to make the process more engaging, to make our minds work together and faster is mind mapping.  As I understand, it is a reflection of all your thoughts, dreams, connections and ideas from the head on the  sheet of paper. It allows you to understand your feelings about the problem and structure it. Consequently,  all your colleagues can understand you and try to develop it. As I have watched the video about steps for  mind mapping, I decided, that it would perfectly fit all of us, who were not aware of archeology. So the  perfect solution was to organize a meeting with the specialist and try to make our mind map together- our  skill plus their knowledge. To draw some easy schemes and add stickers as a good way of communication  between two different social groups.

Application

To create a perfect website we made two mind maps: one to specify the look of the site, its appearance, and  a character, and the second one to understand the mechanics and the way of the visitor. At first, we create  three categories named "character", "impression" and "style". Then we asked our clients to write three  adjectives on the stickers and add them on a board with these categories. That's how we found out the main  features of the site we should think of. Nextly we all together made another map imaging that we wanted to  participate in an expedition. So we found some troubles with the clarity and the simplicity of the site  structure. So we got some questions to be solved. Looking back on this experiment, I can say, that it was a  positive educational process and the mind mapping tool led us to see a different side of our job and learned  us to listen to each other,

Insight

I assume the most heartbreaking insight was (after the video I was really confused) to understand that your  mind maps probably won't help you because it's correlated only with your thoughts and experience, not  your customers and clients. If one talks about this specific challenge, I understand, that all people have  different views on the style, character, and mechanics. So mind mapping was a great tool to summarize all  expectations, highlight the most important, and delete the wrong ones. As for the more broad understanding  of design thinking, I learned that all solutions for "very difficult" problems start with easy steps.

Approach

As for the next time when I would use mind mapping I would try to reduce the amount of time that is given  on writing an association or something else to see the fastest and strong thoughts, which are often the most  right ones and hard to catch.

