Week 2 — The Mind Mapping Process
For this week’s assignment, I have learned about the importance of the mind mapping process. This is one of the many techniques that is used for when it comes to ideation as a process. It helped me explore the inputs and outputs that my mind processes whenever comes to the things that I see as a person. Mind maps are an excellent way to visually represent this and organize information. They are extremely helpful in generating and exploring initial ideas.
I learned that these mind maps could be applied to my daily life: from routinely tasks, to experiences, to a simple emotion. I incorporated this concept and developed five core values that I have felt and experienced on a daily basis for that week.
Upon thinking on these core values, I had the requirement where I felt like they needed to be categorized. This would give me a sense of organizing them into their own branches as I would begin the mind mapping process for clarity and filtering. So, I decided to color-code each value into their own colors.
Each individual color for each value all have a meaningful purpose of the chosen colors that I have picked. As you can see, I have chosen “blue” for Work/School, “yellow” for Leisure, “gray” for Responsibility, “green” for Food, and lastly, “red” for Health. Based on these examples, I have chosen the colors based on what I thought of when I hear or see each core value.
Following on the process, I began to start mapping the core values to myself and came up with a multitude of things that I have experienced for this past week.
After completing the map making, I realized that all of these inputs were all interconnected to my thoughts and emotions. Many of them are what I might have been thinking or doing lately. These are the experiences that “occurred” in my current state.
What were some challenges that I have faced?
A few of the challenges that I have faced was that I felt like I have focused too much on subcategorizing every detail and running out of space. I think I could do this differently again with a more free-flowing mind and then worry about the categorization later.
Conclusion
Overall, I enjoyed partaking in the mind mapping process as it really helped me reflect on my experiences, tasks, and emotions for that week. It definitely had given me a new perspective on recording my daily life in such a fun but structured way! It was truly a creative representation of my thought processes and experiences.
On another note, this process had brought out much more than intended. It made me to better understand myself in a nonlinear and associative way. Lots of feelings, thoughts, and ideas came rushing to my mind while writing everything out on my iPad Air; I wanted to write more! I hope to use this map as a foundation and continue to add or make more mind maps along the way. Maybe I could produce something great out of it ultimately! :)
