Visual Thinking, Sketching and Mind Mapping

In the first seminar in our principles of interactive media module, Beata introduced the class to the idea of Mind Mapping and visual thinking and sketching. Mind Mapping is also referred to as Mind Meister or freemind and it can be described in terms of diagrams that work the way you think. They make it easier to understand, remember and communicate complex information.

Beata demonstrated great hints on how to relate areas of my studies such as on simple tasks like note taking and brain storming. I can now take the methods illustrated in the seminar into consideration for developing ideas both in my group work and on my individual assignments and especially when I am researching more for my thesis.

Further to this seminar by Beata I came across a mindmapblog by Chance Brown, in which he talks about how visual mapping improves the way we learn: http://mindmapblog.com/ He includes in his blog links to sites that have templates for ideas on how to create your own Mind Maps, including one on: "5 keys to wealth and happiness (Biggerplat.com).

Encouragement to draw even if you don't feel confident about drawing was a fundamental aspect of the seminar. Many resasons were put forward in favour of drawing;

• Drawing can vastly improve the thinking process,
• Help you visualize how you will undertake a practical task,
  
• Help you understand theory better,
  
• Help you to remember complex theories,
• Puts structure to complicated material and
  
• Makes sense of material so one can understand better.

As well as this Mind Maps contribute to the flow of ideas, our minds wander and get more creative when we are sketching and things are more visual in our mind.

Advice on how to make a good Mind Map:

• Make pictures central
• Use single key words and lots of colour (no longer will notes look mundane and boring and I may even read them more!!!

The following video explains the advantages of mind mapping:



A powerful Mind Map presentation contains a word that centers your attention and has the addition of arrows to express movement. It helps the audience understand your point and help them remember what you are talking about, here is a link to a website offering advice on how to make a good presentation using mind maps.  There is also mind mapping software available to download or buy, check out the video on this website for novamind software: http://www.novamind.com/

As part of the activity at the end of the seminar we were asked to create a mind map of a fellow student. I drew a Mind Map of Grace, in doing so I placed her in the middle of my map and drew various acpects of her life that I knew about her around the image. You can see, here is my first attempt (of many) at Mind Mapping: