What is the optimal way to present complex ideas … such as an overview of a novel's many characters, locations, objects, and actions? Lists of text? Charts showing relationships?
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| Visual Thinking In The Digital Age |
One method of integrating "blocks of information" in a hypertext/hyperlink environment is a new Apple iOS iPad app called "Citia."
Inter-Linear doing business as "Citia"
http://citia.com/The Citia app is addressed in the "The Idea Logical Company" website blog article:
“Citia” apps from Semi-Linear; a whole new way to present high-concept non-fiction
A video presentation by the Citia folks gives a good understanding of what their app provides:
http://online.wsj.com/video/d10-video-semi-linear-demo/08266E29-0233-4097-9549-D4AA85692290.htmlThe author of the blog article says he isn't well-versed with mind maps:
"The cards, sorted into decks, each of which represent a focused idea in the book, keep perspective about where the reader is in relation to the themes (in what I have heard some people refer to as a “mind map”, which must be a term of art I’m not familiar with.)"Perhaps Citia will do a summary of a primer about mind mapping? This class of useful tools (a part of visual thinking in general) deserves to be more accessible.
Visual thinking can benefit not just artists, businessmen, scientists, and entrepreneurs, but also those writing a novel.
An author's story world will include characters, groups, locations, "props," and various actions/activities. Keeping track of those can be daunting. A mind map showing how each part of a novel relates can be valuable in multiple ways. [This is a book's worth of topics in and of itself.]
Mind maps are simply nodes — a blob of information, possibly limited to one word, such as a name — linked by lines. The lines also can be arrows, whether single-ended or double-ended.
Think of index cards connected by strings. Or, short pages of information in a website or document which are hyperlinked together — except splayed out all at once to see at the same time.
The most familiar mind map is an organization chart, but mind maps also can cover more ground than stale org charts or a family genealogy.
These are referred to as "tree charts" by some. The analogy to a tree is apt. Think of the trunk and then move either to the branches or the roots. Each branch or root, no matter how thin of a wisp it is at the fringe, ultimately it can be traced back to the trunk.
One ehnanced version of a mind map is called a concept map. This is a mind map plus the ability to label the lines connecting the nodes:
[Node 1] — line label —> [Node 2]
The line label refers to relationship, dependence, cause, effect, or whatever elucidates the context of the two nodes. Thus:
[Herbivores] — consume —> [Herbaceous Plants]
… is one branch of a concept map. The parent branch could be "Animals," which could be a child branch of "Lifeforms" … and so on up to the top (main trunk) of the hierarchy: Universe … or actually the Maker of the Universe?
There are a number of apps which combine mind maps (symbol-based hierarchal tree-form chart) and notebooks (traditional linear or nested outline text), but mostly the products of these apps end up being limited to the consumption of the user who assembled them. The reason is the data often doesn't tend to "travel well to others" when shared. In part, this is because of different file formats, but also because people visualize things in their own idiosyncratic ways.
What Citia and a few others apparently are trying to do is to enhance the "travels well to others" part.
Perhaps, one screen's worth of data in the Citia app is equivalent to an index card. The app then has invisible digital strings to tie the cards together.
Anything to improve the sharing of strong concepts, which otherwise are lost in a tangle of less "impactful" thoughts, is welcome in my book.
