MindMan Helps Manage Creativity

Rainer Mauth

The concept behind mind mapping is as simple as it is enticing: Instead of using traditional lists and other forms of note-taking during brainstorming sessions and general idea conception, use color, curved lines, and suggestive symbols to be more creative. This mirrors the way in which the mind works and lets you harness your creativity to the best advantage.

Whereas traditional mind mapping involves the use of paper and colored pens, MindMan 3.0 uses all the bells and whistles of the Windows 95 GUI to stimulate and visualize your ideas. With MindMan you can drag and drop branches to reorganize your ideas quickly, drag and drop objects from other applications, create hyperlinks to external documents and Web pages, link multiple mind maps, and define relationships between items or branches. The tool also lets you attach textual notes to items and branches and automatically assigns symbols to keywords.

Because creative processes are often more efficient when done with teams, MindMan has a conferencing system that allows for real-time editing and collaborating of shared mind maps via the Internet.

The beta version I tested didn't include any tutorials, which may be helpful if your're new to mind mapping. However, MindMan is impressively easy to use, and its concept of user interaction is consistent. The quality of the symbol library needs work, however. Most icons are just blunt and sober bit maps.

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Where to Find

MindMan 3.0..................DM 129

Visualizing Ideas
Karlsfeld, Germany
Phone:    +49 8131 505047
Fax:      +49 8131 505046
E-mail:   
susan@mindman.com

Internet: 
http://www.mindman.com

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