Mind Maps: the Poor Man's Design Tool

CowboyRobot writes "'UML too complex? Flowcharts too old school? Mind maps offer a simple way to capture designs and weave them together elegantly.' The quickest way to begin designing a program is to simply write down the steps in normal text, but this method breaks down with more complex projects. UML can be a useful format for larger projects but can be difficult to get right, especially when trying to use it with a less conventional project. The middle ground are 'Mind Maps,' 'a diagrammatic representation of loosely connected ideas. They are a central tool in brainstorming sessions. Mind map tools help capture ideas and then mush them around until you have the structure you want.'"

Comments

Post-It notes and watercooler gossip

[Rogerborg]

You can spend a week in a tiger team lock-in session, mind mapping the shizzle out of your next project. Eventually, a desperate delirium sets in, and you'll agree to anything just to get out of there. Thus the design is "finalised".

Then by the time you get back to your keyboard, some executive vice president of marketing is accidentally exposed to a copy of Wired, and decides that instead of writing an app to keep recipes on, what you really need is to ride the frontsurge to a collaboratively cloudsourced web 3.0 win-win solution, and the charade starts all over again.

Experience starts to look a lot like cynicism after a while.

Re:Oh boy

[thatskinnyguy]

Perhaps you can come back to myspace and doodle my google til its reddit and I yahoo all over your facebook.