By Jack Park
How can you improve your thinking – alone or in a group? How can mapping ideas help you understand the relationships among them? How can mapping a conversation create a new reality for those involved?
In what follows, I draw on the work of Daniel Kahneman’s (2011) best-selling book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which explains how human thinking occurs at different speeds, from the very fast thinking associated with face-to-face conversation to the very slow thinking associated with assembling information resources into encyclopedias. I use those ideas in my descriptions of knowledge maps.
Three kinds of knowledge maps
I describe three kinds of idea (knowledge) maps, organized from fastest thinking (lowest cognitive overhead to put ideas on paper) to slower thinking, where the map requires deeper, reflective thinking:
- Mind maps
- Concept maps
- Dialogue/Issue maps
Mind maps
At the lowest level, by which I mean, lowest cognitive overhead, you just want to see ideas in relation to other ideas, with no particular interest in what those relations are. Think: brainstorming or rapid note taking.
As the image shows, you simply identify a core topic, and then draw spider-web-like lines radiating outward from that, identifying related topics along the way. In the image, the core topic is “tennis”. Radiating around it are the principal topics which are thought to relate to the core topic, such as “scoring”, and “shots”, each of which is further connected to more topics.
Mind maps do not have to be as artistic as the image illustrated. You can construct them by simply drawing a circle around a topic near the middle of a page, then add key points you want to record:
- Write points in various places near the central topic
- Underline or circle each
- Then connect the underline or circle to the key topic.
You have choices: the easiest, lowest cognitive overhead approach is to just write the new topics anywhere. If you feel like thinking a bit more deeply, consider organizing those first topics say, some on the left side, some on the right side, especially if those on the left have some meaning that is different from those on the right. As an example, if you are thinking about planning a trip, put the requirements on the left, then plan the trip’s itinerary on the right.
In a mind map you do not think about the meanings of those lines which connect topics. You are only capturing relationships among topics.
Concept maps
Concept maps are the next step following mind maps and are used to begin to think in more specifics about concepts and their relations.
The image below shows a concept map’s structure. The map is more formal than a mind map: it now relies on circles and carefully drawn lines. The terminology of concept maps gives names to the circles (nodes), and to the lines (arcs). Specifically, some of the arcs in the image are labeled: they have names for the relationships they represent.
You can hand sketch a concept map, or use varieties of available tools to do so. You can draw arcs which have arrows on both ends, or just on one end. In the example above, the key concept is “electricity” and a connected labeled arc tells us that “electricity is a form of energy”. That is, concept maps can represent factual statements. Looking in the other direction from “energy”, we can follow an unlabeled arc to learn about the sources of energy.
Dialogue/Issue Maps
Now consider a specialized concept map platform, one organized around thoughts in terms of questions, answers, and pro and con arguments. If you create such a map during a live conversation, it’s called a dialogue map. The very same kind of map can be created while thinking about a problem or taking notes during research; that is called an issue map.
I crafted the issue map below while reading a Paul Krugman OpEd: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/07/opinion/07krugman.html based on reported food riots. The narrative takes apart the issue into three primary reasoning branches: long term trends, bad luck, and bad policy. It then dives deeper into causal factors associated with each of those branches.
The issue map uses images to signal questions (question mark), answers (light bulb), confirmation (plus sign; not shown in the image), counter-argument (minus sign). The relationships do not have to be labelled as they are easily inferred from the general semantics of an issue map. An answer can improve on another answer.
An open source tool called Compendium, available from the Open University at [Moderator update – In February 2025, this link was no longer available and so the link structure has been left in place but the active link deleted: compendium.open.ac.uk] is useful for this kind of work.
Conclusion
Of course, the methods can be combined. For example, mind maps are a terrific way to conduct small meetings; you can start by sketching ideas with “Post It” notes on a board, then draw lines among them, and the outcome can be recorded through photographs or other means. For many uses, mind maps alone are sufficient to kickstart larger conversations. Those conversations can be recorded into dialogue maps and shared among participants. Overall, knowledge mapping technologies provide important, sometimes crucial means of communication among stakeholders, especially where heterogeneity of cognitive styles, world views, and core backgrounds exist.
What has your experience been in mapping your ideas for yourself? With your colleagues?
To find out more:
Buzan, T. (2011). Tony Buzan – Inventor of mind mapping. Online: https://tonybuzan.com/about-us
Conklin, J. (nd). A Tool for Wicked Problems: Dialogue Mapping FAQs. Online: https://www.cognexus.org/id41.htm
Novak., J. D. and Cañas, A. J. (2008). The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them. Technical Report, Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), CmapTools 2006-01, Revised 2008-01. Online: https://cmap.ihmc.us/docs/theory-of-concept-maps.php
Reference:
Kahneman, Daniel. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, United States of America.