Beyond hierarchies: A better paradigm for mind mapping?

Shelly Hayduk, writing in TheBrain Blog, recently posted an article that suggests that traditional hierarchical mind maps may not be the best way to present complex information and knowledge. She points out that almost all software interfaces today are limited to organizing information into hierarchies, where a piece of information can only be categorized into one place. A case in point: the traditional file manager view in Microsoft Windows, where the directory tree resembles an expandable and contractible outline.

Here's where things get a little controversial: While Shelly acknowledges that mind mapping software offers an improved information hierarchy, it shares the same limitation as the directory tree of your computer's filing system, because each topic can have only one parent. If you want to create a link from one topic to a branch that is distant from it, this is somewhat hard to represent visually, especially in a very large map.

In contrast, PersonalBrain, the desktop software developed by her employer, is designed to create complex connections between widely disparate topics. Each node in the visual map can have connections to numerous other topics, enabling you to display non-hierarchical relationships between pieces of information. As a result, Shelly says TheBrain can be used to display and manipulate maps consisting of several thousand nodes, while giving a more complete picture of each node's multitude of relationships.

Please note: This isn't meant to be a commercial for TheBrain, but to highlight the philosophical differences between TheBrain's approach to visual information management and that of "traditional" mind mapping software.

What do you think? Have you downloaded and evaluated PersonalBrain? What was your experience? How well does it do at helping you to visualize relationships between ideas in your maps? I look forward to your feedback.

Comments

[Garry Robbins]

I used PersonalBrain and it's enterprise big brother BrainEKP for over 5 years. PB was my first exposure to the mind-mapping concept, and it didn't take me long to develop some pretty sophisticated "brains".
In PB, each thought can have multiple parent, child and peer links. This allows one to link (cross-file) concepts very easily.
Most mind-mapping tools I've seen are two-dimensional with pretty graphics. TheBrain's visual interface is the closest you can get to multi-dimensional navigation without 3-D goggles.
I've looked at other mm tools and still benchmark them against TheBrain products. Thought types, link rules, concept catehorization ... there's a lot more than just pretty pictures inside.

[Aron]

I have used MindManager extensively for the past couple of years, and it's been extremely helpful. However, I recently tried out PersonalBrain and I have to agree with Shelly Hayduk. My biggest struggle with MindManager is that each topic can only be a child of one other topic (relationship are visually cumbersome at best). If the PersonBrain gets more polished (the user interface feels pretty cludgy right now) then I would be hard pressed not to switch over. The ability to navigate nodes and see the relationships to other concepts is extremely powerful.

[Xavier]

I probably have less experience with mindmaping than the others here (eventhough I do have some!).

I did try the PB, but I haven't been able to really grasp how to make it work! And the interface is really not easy to get accustomed to ...

But never say never again ... I think I will have to have another look at it!

[Riccardo]

Amen,
I totally agree, I find the radial tree structure of mind mapping very limiting.
It works ok for representing a restricted set of knowledge, but if you need to dissect a large problem it fails as you cannot "rotate" the problem around (you are always in the pathway of a set hierarchy). That means that your limited in your problem solving or analytical approach by the way you structure your tree.

[gmmazza]

Absolutelly agree. I'm still trying to use traditional mindmaping, becouse I find it just a nicer outliner, and for my taste very unidimensional, some softwares like resultsmanager for mindmanager leave to reorganice info in other ways. To represent complex relationships, something that cmaps can do in a limited way is the way of living in personalbrain. Is the way to go. Still needs some tweakings in the organization and diferentiation of the "thoughts", and interconection with other softwares. Still is the best!. Is not even in the category of mindmaping. IS really mindmaping.