What Tools do you use for Ideation and Mind Mapping?
When coming up with a new product idea, we often go off into different areas and think of all the components that could be added in order to bring it to life.
The ideation process is one of the most important for setting out the vision of your business.
The process of mind mapping is a great exercise to conduct for expressing your business idea and mapping all the features you want it to include.
It helps to get everything out of your head and onto a page or screen so we can visually organize it.
Some tools I have been using recently include MindMeister, Miro and a good old pen and paper.
What tools do you use for mapping ideas and fleshing them out?
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I came across Whimsical recently, not tried it yet though.
Whimsical is a beast product. Can't stress this enough. I've been a fan of paper-pen method always (still am), but Whimsical has made it so easier for me to keep everything at one place - mind-maps, flowcharts and wireframes. + their UX is amazing - I love the simplicity, floating menus and intuitive action buttons/shortcuts(must for mind-mapping)
I've used MindMeister, draw.io, xMind in past, but I've found my match in Whimsical.
This product looks absolutely amazing, thanks for sharing
Thanks @rosiesherry. This looks quite interesting.
I built https://getrumin.com/ and I dog food it every day. For both fleshing out product ideas, and for developing a deeper understanding from my learnings.
Thanks for sharing @jhlyeung
Funny that Miro hasn't been mentioned yet. On another note, a free, open-source project that really delivers is diagrams.net
I mentioned Miro in the original post @fernando_. Diagrams.net looks like an interesting one also. Thanks for sharing!
Oh, missed that. Glad you like it!
I am using MindMeister for that, but I am also working for the company behind MindMeister so maybe I’m a bit biased 😅
Haha thanks for sharing @Zwenza. I am a fan of MindMeister so well done on everything you are doing!
MindNode. It's a macbook app that's free on the app store. Simple and to the point. But works well for getting ideas out.
MindNode’s great!
Sweet, I'll have to check this out.
I used to use MindMeister, but I didn't like the cost. I tried a couple of freeware ones years ago, but haven't looked at what's available now. Too bad Microsoft didn't have one in Microsoft 365! There are some interesting ones listed in this post, appreciate people mentioning theirs. cheers
Thanks for sharing @antarctican
The concept of using software to enable brainstorming is just so very, very alluring that I find myself retrying it every few years. I'll sit down and learn a tool and get determined, and then I'll get distracted.
Pen and paper still wins for me. The closest I've come to a reasonable replacement is just dumping idea lists into org-mode and organizing them later.
Thanks for sharing @DylanFitzgerald. Pen and paper is hard to beat and is always the good old reliable.
I second Whimsical
I shared my Notion template on IndieHackers a couple weeks ago, it's what I use exclusively when I'm investigating new ideas.
Check it out and let me know what you think!
Thanks for sharing @Kevcon80. Looks like a great way to capture data around customer interviews.
No problem!
Nothing fancy, just Google Keep and Google Docs. These tools work for me because I make information products.
Sometimes simple is best @PaoloAmoroso. I like the visual aspect of making a mind map and all the branches off of each element in one place.
Yes, what I need most of the time is to capture the idea itself and record a big-picture view. The rest is literally an implementation detail.
I am also looking for a similar tool.
I just tweeted here - https://twitter.com/rajkbnp/status/1375353956633731074 for the larger audience reach.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
Thanks for sharing @jeffjadulco. I also use Notion for notes. I'll have to check out Whimsical though, haven't used it before and Rosie also suggested it above.