A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information into a hierarchy, showing relationships among pieces of the whole.[1]
It is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the centre of a blank page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those major ideas.
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Why use a mindmap?
A mindmap is used to break down an idea and explicit the relationship of their parts.
It can be used in many settings of the research process:
“deploying” and making explicit the interconnected parts of your research question (see: our upcoming post “Disambiguation of research question”)
preparing a keyword list for literature review
preparing an experiment, an analysis
preparing a paper
preparing a presentation
etc.
Creating a mindmap, where to start?
There is no recipe (especially one that would fit all above listed purpose), but you could try those steps:
Writing down the objective of this mind map
The same topic ‘broken down’, or ‘broken down for a paper’ will likely produce different results
Starting with the main central topic.
If possible, make this central idea a statement: a hypothesis is great. If your feel you are stuck here visit this post.
Breaking down the main idea, into smaller parts, that are aligned with your objective
In the case of the hypothesis, the goal is to find a way to confirm or refute it. Therefore on could start by listing down all aspects that are or need to be supported for your hypothesis to be validated (within the scope of the research)
From there, it is a matter of breaking things down: increasing the number of elements but decreasing their complexity
For our hypothesis, now that we have listed supporting arguments and counter-arguments, we could list resources or experiments that could support, prove or disprove these argument. Then what these entail etc.
Try it for yourself
Below is a hosted web-based mind-mapping tool:
we don’t record what your put here: if you want to keep it, that’s on you ;)
