Guide

What is Concept Mapper?

Concept Mapper is a tool for thinking about things which are too big to hold in your head. You break the subject up into nodes, and join them together with arrows. The result looks a bit like a mind map, but with more structure — every node has a type, so the map shows the shape of your thinking, and not just its contents.

There are two main use cases, though of course you can use it for whatever you like.

Problem solving

Start with the question you're stuck on, add an idea for each possible answer, then hang the positives and negatives off each idea until the trade-offs are clear. The worked example below goes through this from start to finish.

Learning

Concept Mapper is great for breaking new topics into manageable chunks. Say you're learning how the water cycle works: make the topic your root node, give each stage its own node beneath it, then attach the material you're learning from — a link to the article you read, an image of a diagram, and notes explaining the stage in your own words.

Colour is useful here too. Mark the parts you haven't grasped yet in red, and work through them until the map has no red left in it.

Getting started

Everything happens inside the app, which you'll find at My Maps after logging in.

1. Create a map. Click Create new map, give it a title, and optionally put it in a collection (collections are just groups — 'Work', 'House move', and so on).
2. Add your first node. Right click anywhere on the empty canvas, choose Add node, and pick a type. The node appears where you clicked. For a problem you're solving, start with a Question.
3. Grow the map. Click a node to open its menu, then choose Add child node and a type. The new node is created already connected to the one you started from — this is the quickest way to build a map out.
4. Fill in the detail. Choose Edit node from the same menu. As well as the title, a node can have notes, a colour, a size, and an image.

Moving around

Drag a node to move it. Drag on empty canvas to draw a box around several nodes and select them all at once. To move the canvas itself, scroll up and down with the scroll wheel, hold shift to scroll sideways, and hold ctrl to zoom in and out. There are also zoom buttons in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen, including one which fits the whole map on screen.

Connecting nodes

Connections are shown in the map as arrows, pointing from a child node to its parent.

To join two nodes which already exist, open the first node's menu, choose Connect nodes, then click the node you want to join it to.

Clicking an arrow lets you edit the connection. You can give it a label, reverse its direction, delete it, or insert a new node into the middle of it.

Giving connectors meaning

You can add a label and colour to connectors to give them additional meaning. Just click on the dot in the middle of the connector to configure this.

For example, you might use a different colour for your strongest ideas.

The node types

The type of a node determines its colour and icon on the map, so you can see the structure of an argument at a glance. Any node's type can be changed later, so don't agonise over it — get the thought down first.

Question

The thing you're trying to work out. Usually the root of the map.

Idea

A possible answer to a question.

Positive

A point in favour of an idea.

Negative

A point against an idea.

Decision

What you settled on, and why.

Note

Background, context, or an observation which isn't an argument either way.

Task

Something which needs doing. Tasks have a status - pending, in progress, completed or cancelled, so a map can double as a to-do list once you've made your decision.

Link

A pointer to a web page - the article you read, the spec you're working from, the product you're considering.

Map

A pointer to another of your maps. Linking maps together keeps each one small, and the meta view draws the picture those links make.

File

Something you've uploaded - a PDF of a paper, a spec or a quote, an MP3 of an interview, an MP4 of a demo - so the source material sits on the map next to the thinking it fed into. Drag one onto the map, or attach it from the node's edit form, then click the icon next to the node to open it.

A worked example

The root node is usually a Question, for example 'What should I do with my front garden?'

It will have several connected Idea nodes, such as:

1. Plant vegetables
2. Lay turf
3. Concrete it for car parking

Each of those nodes will then have several connected Positive and Negative nodes. For idea 1 above, these might be:

• Positive: save money on groceries
• Positive: will eat more vegetables
• Positive: gardening is relaxing
• Negative: time consuming

Once all of the Positive and Negative nodes have been added, it's easier to understand the full scope of the problem.

After weighing up the different ideas, a decision can be made. This is denoted with a Decision node — 'Plant vegetables, starting with the raised bed by the wall' — connected to the idea it came from. Put your reasoning in the node's notes, so that in six months you can still see why you chose it.

From there, Task nodes turn the decision into actions: 'buy seeds', 'build raised bed', 'clear the existing gravel'. As you work through them, set each one's status, and the map becomes a record of progress as well as of thinking.

The summary view

Every map has a second view, which you switch to with the Map / Summary control in the toolbar. It shows the same nodes as an indented outline rather than a canvas.

The summary view is good for a few things the map view isn't:

• Reading a large map from top to bottom, without panning around.
• Printing, or saving as a PDF — the outline is laid out for paper.
• Reading the notes attached to your nodes, which the map view keeps out of the way.

You can edit here as well, and anything you change shows up on the map. Click a node's text to edit it in place, collapse a branch you're not interested in, and use the settings panel to filter the nodes by title, or to hide the notes and images. There's also a reorder button — click it and drag the nodes into the order you want them read in.

Tips and shortcuts

Getting things onto the map quickly

• Drag an image from your desktop onto the map, and it becomes a node.
• Drag a PDF, MP3 or MP4 onto the map, and you get a file node with the file attached to it.
• Drag a URL out of your browser's address bar onto the map, and it becomes a link node pointing at that page.
• Copied some text or an image? Right click and choose Paste as node.
• Copy a node from one map, and paste it into another the same way.
• Moving a node to a different map entirely is done from the node's edit form, under Transfer.

Keeping the map readable

• If your map gets messy, right click on the canvas background and choose Auto Layout. There are four arrangements to pick from, and each one shows a small picture of what you'll get.
• Auto Layout → Remove overlaps keeps the map you've made, and just nudges apart the nodes which are overlapping. It's the one to use if you like your layout and it's only got a bit crowded.
• The other three throw your layout away and arrange the map from scratch, based on how the nodes are connected — Radial puts the root node in the middle with the rest in rings around it, Tree - downwards puts the root node at the top with the branches below, and Tree - across puts it on the left with the branches to the right. You'll be asked to confirm first, because the layout you'd made is lost.
• Node colours can be set independently of the node type, which is useful for highlighting.
• Node sizes (small, medium, large) are worth using to show which parts matter most.
• Select several nodes with a drag box, then right click to change all of their colours or sizes at once.

Getting the map out again

• Right click on empty canvas and choose Save image to download a PNG of the map — handy for putting into a document, a slide deck, or a message to someone who doesn't use Concept Mapper. The whole map is saved, not just the part you can see, so you don't need to zoom out first.
• For something you'd rather read than look at, the summary view prints, and saves as a PDF, as an indented outline.

Keyboard

• esc deselects the selected nodes.
• delete or backspace deletes them — just those nodes, leaving their children behind. To delete the children too, right click and choose Delete → Node + Children.
• When a menu is open, the letter next to an item runs it — e to edit, c to copy, t to connect, p to paste, s to save an image. Items which open a submenu, such as Auto Layout, don't have a letter — click those.
• In the summary view, shift with the up and down arrows moves between nodes.

Finding your way around

• The search box in the top bar searches the titles of all your maps and nodes at once.
• In the map list you can group maps by collection, filter them, and sort them.
• Finished with a map but don't want to lose it? Archive it, and it drops out of the list until you ask to see archived maps.
• Use the pencil icon next to a map's title to rename it, move it to another collection, duplicate it, archive it or delete it.

Why it works

Most real world problems are complex, and can't be solved with a simple formula. There's no single right answer, the requirements shift as you learn more, and every solution creates new problems of its own. These sorts of problems are sometimes called wicked problems.

One tool for solving these kinds of problems is IBIS, which is the basis for Concept Mapper. IBIS says that an argument is made up of just a few kinds of thing: issues, the questions being asked; positions, the possible answers to them; and arguments, the points for and against each position. Concept Mapper's Question, Idea, Positive and Negative nodes are those three things, with a Decision node to record where you landed.

Mapping out your decision process like this is really useful:

1. You consider the problem thoroughly, and weigh up all the options.
2. You can communicate your thought process to other people.
3. If you get distracted, or have to move to a different project, you can come back and pick up your thought process.

Everybody makes complex decisions, in their personal lives (house buying, career choices etc), and professional lives (from engineers designing cars to lawyers planning a case).

Concept Mapper can help us make sense of these difficult problems.