Mind Mapping and User Experience

Recently a wonderful friend and fellow designer turned me onto the idea of mind mapping, and through some of his posts on the process and software he definitely had me ready to buy MindManager 8 (btw he’s also got me sold on Axure, so somebody ought to be paying him for this by now). If you check his site, he has a comparison of various mindmapping tools including some free and lower priced options. MindManager is $350, so why would I pay for it rather than using free, open-source tools? This strikes me as a good example of differentiation through user experience, so let me share a bit of my thought process, based on the assumption that I have already decided to use some mindmapping software (as to my thoughts and reasons why, that’s another entry, but for now, you can just assume I have a good reason).

1. All the options have similar functionality, and many have equal feature sets. In short, most of them will do the things I need. That said, I work alone and as an amateur, so the functions they all have meet my needs now, even if I’d like to use some higher end stuff later on a professional basis. If this was all that mattered, I would’ve chosen the free one immediately.

2. Screenshots. My husband is going to roll his eyes at this. Compare screenshots. MindManager uses an Office 2007 like ribbon interface, with a wealth of flags, markers, symbols, and creative drawing options. If I didn’t want to be able to easily use flags and other icons as well as actually enjoy my interface, I’d still be scribbling on a notepad.

This is a mindmapping program - it needs to let me be creative, and it needs to excite my mind with what I can achieve using it. Don’t give me some ugly interface, I want something sexy and exciting. I don’t want just functional, I want something that makes my mindmaps impressive and worth sharing. MindManager works better because it opens creative possibilities and stretches my ideas of what I can do with the software. I’m instantly thinking about what flags and icons I can use to add meaning, and how I can use colour schemes, different fonts, shapes, lines, and so forth, to communicate my thoughts creatively and effectively. I’m a designer, I don’t want to be restricted to black, white, and fugly.

3. The demo experience. MindJet offers a free demo, you email them to get access. Most people don’t like giving their email out but by doing so, I’ve gotten an awesome demo. And how did MindJet make me feel good about giving them my address? They immediately emailed me, thanked me, told me about the demo, and pointed me to tutorials and tips on how to get started. Immediately I knew I was valuable and I could easily get using this software. I don’t want it thrown at me and then to be ignored - no sales associate in a store would ignore me while I was looking at their goods. Why do software vendors do it? I want someone who says “good morning, how are you today? let me know if I can do anything at all for you”.

4. On Twitter I must’ve mentioned MindManager and they must’ve had someone searching Tweets for people talking about their software. Immediately I got a personal message from someone saying, quite literally what I mentioned above, “let me know if I can do anything at all for you”. I am tired of just being sold a product - I want good service. I grew up with a father who provided top-notch, excellent, quality service to everyone who came into his store, because it was the only right way to do it. Period. If you can’t make the effort to smile and say “good day, how can I help you”, don’t waste my time. If money means more to you then my happiness, I’ll look elsewhere.

5. Instructional materials. The first thing I was offered when I opened MindManager was interactive tutorials and videos to get started, see how it’s done, and make my own demo mindmap. Instantly I was enthralled, excited, and inspired by how easily and quickly I could work in this software. If your software makes me think I’m going to need hours to figure it out, I’m going to find someone like MindJet who understands I’m not going to touch dusty old reference manuals or click around trying to find the right menu item. Especially when it’s something like mindmapping, and is therefore not instinctive or obvious to the everyday user.

Also, I don’t need to be told to click a button, I need to shown what the button does for me. I’ve been using Windows for a long time, and “click the Ok button” is not an instruction I need.

6. Check the website - Mindjet: MindManager 8. See how quickly you spot the key differentiators? The site is clean, crisp, and bold, yet all the interface elements get out of the way as you read through. The bits that make this software more powerful then others are clearly stated, and an interactive example of the mindmap you can do in their software is the first thing you see. If that doesn’t inspire your creativity and make you want to dive in and start using their software, I don’t know what else could.

In Short…

It all goes back to flow, “the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity”. Here we have software that is in the best position to combine great functions with creative design possibilities - because, after all, that’s what mindmapping is all about - taking creativity and making it usable, effective, and organized, then saving and sharing it. MindJet exemplifies the purpose of their software in their service. Their software gets the functionality right, but so do many others.

The difference here is in the user experience. They smoke the competition in my eyes because they went so far above and beyond requirements. I expect software to meet my needs and provide great functionality, and all of the options do. But I want to know what sofware does for me, I want it to empower me to reach my goals, and I want to see how fast I can make it happen. It couldn’t be any clearer then what I get through getting a trial version of MindManager, using their interactive tutorials, and visiting their website.