Create a Mindmap with MindMeister.com

A mind map, according to the main page of one mindmapping platform, “is a graphical representation of ideas and concepts. It’s a visual thinking tool for structuring information, helping you to better understand, remember and generate new ideas.”

In other words, this software can be used to brainstorm, to represent data, and to show relationships between pieces of data. One thing to keep in mind is that Mindmeister.com is not the most helpful with large amounts of data that have a single type of relationship. Therefore, it’s important to recognize that this is not a network analysis tool. Because of the way that the site is set up, these pieces of information are entered individually. This can be both a benefit and a limitation. Through specific and intentional identification of the relationship between each piece of data, the intricacies of a more complicated relationship can be explored. However, the amount of data is therefore constrained by time and effort.

Mindmapping can be used in a variety of ways. It can be used to begin planning a project, to present a piece of work, and to create an interactive representation of relationships, among many others.

This tutorial will use a simple example of planning a thesis driven paper to demonstrate how to use the site. If you want more help navigating MindMeister, check out this video.

  1. Create a MindMeister account with facebook, google, or another email address.

2. Once you sign up, click on create new map, which will bring you to this page

3. Check out the interactive tutorial on the bottom left of the page by clicking the little purple question mark. This will take you through a step by step introduction to the site, showing you how to add new bubbles, change the color of your mind map, add images and videos, link to other mind maps or websites, and eventually how to present your map.

4. One of the coolest parts of this site is that it has templates available for various uses. These are categorized into things like business, education, life and technology.

5. Choose one of these templates to begin creating your mind map, depending on the purpose of your project. For this example, the purpose will be a plan for a thesis driven essay, created from scratch (and not filled out to a large extent). As you fill out your mind map, look to the toolbar on the right side of the page. From here, you can add comments to each bubble or link to any additional information that seems too big to add to the actual mind map.

6. Once you have added everything you want to your mind map, there are a few options for presenting. It can progress through the mind map step by step, starting at the center or top (depending on which type of map you create) and moving on from there. You can the order in which the pieces of your mind map are presented by hitting the little screen icon at the bottom left of the page. An option will present itself  to auto-create the presentation. If you hit this button, you will be able to maneuver through the order of the presentation.

7. Once you are satisfied with your project, you can either export it using the cloud icon on the bottom right of the page, and options will pop up.

8. Or you can hit the little share icon on the bottom left of the screen, which will give you options to publish it to a social media platform, or to invite people via email to view your project.

9. Be sure to check out some of the awesome amenities of the site. You can navigate easily between themes by clicking the little i in the upper right of the page.

Again, if it’s not fairly obvious from the set up of the site, this product is designed not as a method of analysis, but as a mode of presentation. However, the ease of use of MindMeister and the multiple tools that it offers allows for plenty of applicable uses. Additionally, these tools allow for a lot of information to be layered on top of one another in a way that still provides a fairly clean presentation. In terms of digital humanities projects, this seems most applicable for presenting a project and linking to various ideas within that project rather than as a tool to analyze any data.

For more advanced tutorials, check out this link.

Author: wasende

2 comments

  1. I like that a lot of the creation process of these mind maps includes extensive options for the visual aspects of the presentation, such as the option to add an image, link, or even a video, as well as the option to color the “bubbles” and background differently. That is a big part of the tool’s purpose of presentation. Is there a way to view other people’s public projects without access to a link? In other words, is there a section to explore published projects by others?

  2. Yeah! It’s almost like a social media platform in that way, that you can preselect which types of projects you are interested in and the site displays published maps for you to look at. I think this could be another way in which this site is very DH thinking – it’s very into collaboration and getting people thinking about other people’s projects.

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