Mind Mapping?

[pneill]

It would be great if OmniFocus had an integrated mind mapper that you could turn into next action items for a project.

[BwanaZulia]

There is pretty good MindMapping in OmniGraffle.

Not sure how easy it would be to integrate.

BZ

[pneill]

Mind mapping in OmniGraffle is a bit of a kludge if you ask me. When I'm mind mapping I just want a blank screen that I can drop ideas into very quickly. I don't like the way I have to use this outline and then move from their to the graph view. It's changing context (at least for me) and that interrupts the flow of brainstorming. Check out the way that MindJet does brainstorming (the Pro PC version) and also look at Inspiration's brainstorming mode. Very good.

[Joel]

You might want to try out working in the diagram view in OmniGraffle, selecting a shape and then Command-clicking the empty canvas to automatically create a connected child, or Option-Command-clicking to create a sibling.

This method obeys the Diagram Styling as well.

[Mario.Batz@cern.ch]

Unfortunately this does not work for me, when using the OmniGraffle MindMap Stencil. Not very convinient.

You might want to try out working in the diagram view in OmniGraffle, selecting a shape and then Command-clicking the empty canvas to automatically create a connected child, or Option-Command-clicking to create a sibling.

This method obeys the Diagram Styling as well.

[Bob Nahasapeemapetilon]

I ended up purchasing NovaMind and Merlin.
I do have OmniGraffle Pro and love it, but Nova Mind is more robust for Mind Mapping and integrates beautifully with Merlin 2. They used to have some video tutorials, but it seems they are currently being updated.
Within the mind mapping application you are able to define tasks, assign start/finish dates, show percentage complete, etc.
A 'parent' activity set gets automatically updated based on the status of its subtasks.
And Merlin can also import OMNI Outliner documents. I have not tried that feature yet, though.

[dancingbrook]

Clearly Omni is in a good market position. And if they could offer integration across their apps they would dominate. Unfortunately it appears integration is a second thought and their data file don't facilitate even cross-application integration, even within their own apps. And currently do almost nothing to integrate with Apples data (eg in AB or iCal).

[Curlypaws]

I'd second the mention of Novamind - for the money it is a great mind mapping tool, certainly better than the very expensive Mind Manager.

Cheaper tools such as Incubator are also really nice - if not quite as flexible as Novamind.

[Guntis]

I'd second the mention of Novamind - for the money it is a great mind mapping tool, certainly better than the very expensive Mind Manager.
My friend bought MindJet MindManager, and I really like it better than Novamind - for me Novamind looks "childish", MindManager looks more "Pro".

[Bob Nahasapeemapetilon]

My friend bought MindJet MindManager, and I really like it better than Novamind - for me Novamind looks "childish", MindManager looks more "Pro".

While looks are important, it’s not the most important feature for me.
Inbox, Cha-Ching, Disco, and many other applications look great. I would not use any of these unless I was in the mood for some beta-testing.

Novamind’s integration with Merlin is anything but childish, by the way.
I do know that MindManager has integration with FastTrack Schedule, although I did not try this feature when I tried the demo.

Some of the examples in NovaMind’s site are a bit cartoonish, but that does not mean that you can’t create professional looking documents with it.

Based on visuals alone, I could also work with Curio or OmniGraffle which are great programs as well. For me it was important to have some of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ features of NovaMind, such as the aforementioned integration with Merlin.

I would recommend that people try them both, as well as Compendium and other similar applications :)

Also, in addition to the cartoonish images NovaMind’s library includes many serious looking images. For some reason the examples they chose to display in their website are the more cartoonish ones.

[rickla]

Unfortunately this does not work for me, when using the OmniGraffle MindMap Stencil. Not very convinient.

As far as I know, the mind mapping stencil was created, by a third party, before real mind mapping became possible in OmniGraffle. The items created with the stencil are just graphical objects like any other, not mind map items.

To do mind mapping in OmniGraffle Professional, I recommend first opening the utilities drawer, make sure the outline tab is selected, and at the bottom choose Brainstorming - Clouds as your diagram style (doesn't have to be that but it looks good). I create the initial item in the outline drawer but then switch my focus to the main document area and use mainly the Command-Control-Arrow combinations to add new items. These can be tidied up later in the outline drawer if need be. I recommend experimenting with turning the auto layout on and off.

OG isn't a specialist mind mapping tool, and doesn't have the full feature set of things like Novamind, nor the simplicity of Incubator or Pyramid. But a colleague and I often turn to it when we're stuck cowriting a paper, and find the combination graphic/outline interface very helpful.

[wharper]

As a forewarning, I haven't been tracking any of these forums for what OmniFocus will feature (although I am eagerly awaiting its release).

What I'd be curious to see is a View option to see the entire scope of projects with nested actions as a mindmap.

I haven't yet delved into how OmniFocus might allow for adding further hierarchies to the projects (Work projects vs. Home projects vs. School projects vs. Someday/Maybe projects, etc.), but I think it would be a great weekly review tool to be able to hit a 'View as Mindmap' button, and see everything dynamically like that, perhaps with a 'View altitude' setting that would let you turn on or off all nested actions, etc.

The notion of being able to drill down to seeing the finer actions steps vs. zooming out to see how projects relate to the larger areas of responsibility or longer term goals could be mindblowing.

I mean, I don't know anything about software programming, but I'm sure that'd be really simple to whip up, right? (sarcasm intended)

[dancingbrook]

The notion of being able to drill down to seeing the finer actions steps vs. zooming out to see how projects relate to the larger areas of responsibility or longer term goals could be mindblowing.

I mean, I don't know anything about software programming, but I'm sure that'd be really simple to whip up, right? (sarcasm intended)

Actually, relatively yes. There are other mind mapping apps that do this already, all they are missing are a scheduling fields of the database, and perhaps a few different views of the data. Not really that hard the whip up.

[wharper]

Actually, relatively yes. There are other mind mapping apps that do this already, all they are missing are a scheduling fields of the database, and perhaps a few different views of the data. Not really that hard the whip up.

Yesterday after posting I finally started playing around with OmniGraffle, and I see what you mean regarding the easy transition they can make between outline and mind map form. My question now is whether or not people would find that to be a useful enough feature for OmniGroup to consider implementing it.

The difficulty aspect that I had imagined was something a little more dynamic like what they have over at visuwords.com (http://www.visuwords.com/). Of course animating the mindmap would just be extra bells and whistles, but I think there's something really enjoyable in the what visuwords has going on.

[joshfree]

Thought I'd throw in a vote for MindManager. Its fast, simple, clean and clear maps don't get in the way when you're brainstorming or organizing. I find NovaMind's interface unappealing and the maps somewhat childish as well. As a designer, all that is very important to me.

That childish, whimsical (often ugly) approach is one of the things that turned me off mind mapping in general when it was initially developed. So, technically, Novamind is truer to the original source (Tony Buzan) but that's its weakness as far as I'm concerned.

I would love to be able to easily get content out of OF and into MM, though. I tend to accumulate Someday/Maybe's in OF then want to export them to MM to keep my OF database manageably lean. It's a pain in the butt, so far. If anyone has a suggestion, I'd love to hear it.

I tried the Applescript posted here
http://web.mac.com/robinfrancistrew/Site/OF2Omnioutliner.html
but it ended up creating many, many duplicates in the resulting OO document, requiring lots of hand editing.

I wish OF would just export to OO format natively. That would simplify so much.

[wdiadamo]

Not sure if this is the appropriate place, but I would suggest looking here: http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/graphics-roundups/9-mind-mapping-tools-for-mac/.

I like MindNode; simple is good.

[frido]

It is surprising that Omni haven't made use of the fact that they have all the necessary apps in their stable to create an integrated solution. A mind map is a tree - so is an OF structure. They are just different ways of looking at the same data.

There are lots of useful mind mapping solutions out there (my favourite is also MindNode (http://www.mindnode.com)). But the killer implementation would be a view of a tree or a sub-tree in OF as a map. And, inversely, a way of importing a mind map from, say, OmniGraffle into OmniFocus.

[vballas]

Have you tried ConceptDraw office ?

3 Applications (project, mindmapping and graphing) in one office integrated suite. Works very well for me plus it has a windows version (you buy a license for windows and mac at the same price).
This way I can also use in the work PC and home mac (not all of us are lucky.

Finally I heard that soon (1-2 months) they will have a version 2 where I expect even better things.