011 min
The problem mind mapping solves
Picture a designer at a subscription app who has to plan the app's help centre. Customers have asked many different questions, and the support team has pasted them into one long list. The list follows the order in which the questions arrived. A question about a failed payment sits far from a question about a refund, although the two belong together. The designer cannot tell which topics have many questions, which have one, and which are missing.
A list shows one idea after another. It does not show which ideas belong together. The designer needs a page where related questions sit close to each other and the gaps are easy to see. Mind mapping is one way to get that page. People have drawn pages like it for a very long time, and one person gave the method its name.
021 min
Where mind mapping comes from
Drawing knowledge as a diagram that splits into smaller parts is an old idea. In the third century, the thinker Porphyry of Tyros drew the categories described by Aristotle as a branching diagram. Such a diagram starts with one broad category and divides it into narrower ones. The philosopher Ramon Llull also used techniques of this kind in the Middle Ages.
The name is much newer. The term "mind map" began with Tony Buzan's 1974 BBC television series Use Your Head. Buzan taught one specific version of the method: a word or image in the centre, a single keyword on each line, and colour and pictures to make ideas easier to remember. A site that promotes the method says Buzan holds registered trademarks on both "Mind Map" and "Mind Mapping".
The steps are simple enough that most guides teach the same ones. The next section follows them.
032 min
How to make a mind map
Back to the designer with the long list of customer questions. Here is how they would turn it into a mind map, step by step.
- Write the main topic in the middle of a blank page. The designer writes "help centre".
- Draw a line out from the centre for each major group you can see. These lines are called branches. Guides usually suggest three to five at the start. The designer draws branches for "billing", "account" and "cancelling".
- Put one keyword on each branch, not a sentence. A short word is quick to scan and leaves room for more ideas to attach to the branch later.
- Add smaller branches off each main branch for the detail. Each customer question becomes a short phrase on a smaller branch.
- Mark what matters. Use a different colour for each main branch, a picture for an idea that is hard to say in one word, and a thicker line where a link is stronger.
The result is a tree. It has one centre, and its branches only split. They never join again.
Paper or screen
A map can be drawn by hand during a lecture or a meeting, or it can be made in software. Software makes it easy to move a branch, share the map with a team, attach files and start from a template. Some programs can build a first map from a block of text. Paper is quicker to start and has nothing to learn, but a page limits how far the map can grow, and moving a branch means redrawing it.
042 min
Mind mapping in design work
The finished map shows gaps and crowding that the list did not. The billing branch is crowded with small branches. The cancelling branch has almost none, which tells the designer to ask the support team whether questions are missing there.
The designer then reads each main branch as a top-level group of the help centre. The smaller branches become the pages inside each group. That is a first draft of the structure the help centre needs, which designers call information architecture: how content is grouped, labelled and found.
Maps like this serve several jobs in design work.
- Brainstorming. A team puts a question in the centre and adds ideas around it. Guides for running a session give the same advice as brainstorming in general: set a time limit, accept every idea, and judge later.
- Planning the structure of a site or app. The main branches become the top-level groups and the smaller branches become pages, as above.
- Starting a user journey. A designer can list the moments in a person's day with a product as branches, then move them into a journey mapping format that shows order and feeling.
- Breaking a project into tasks. The centre is the goal and each branch is a part of the work.
When the starting material is a set of research notes rather than one topic, designers more often sort them with affinity diagramming. A mind map starts from one topic and grows outward. An affinity diagram starts from many separate notes and groups them.
052 min
Mind mapping vs. concept mapping
A mind map is easy to confuse with the concept map, because both use boxes and lines. A concept map is a diagram of concepts joined by lines, where words on each line say how the two concepts relate. Joseph Novak developed concept maps in 1972 during research at Cornell University, where he wanted to follow changes in children's knowledge of science. Mind maps are counted as a type of spider diagram, which is any diagram with a centre and lines running out from it. Concept maps are a different tool with a different job.
| Mind map | Concept map | |
|---|---|---|
| Shape | One centre, with branches that split outward | Many concepts in a top-down layout, general ideas first |
| Words on lines | Usually one keyword on the branch, nothing describing the link | Linking words on every line, so each link reads as a statement |
| Joins between branches | None. Each branch comes from only one other branch | Cross-links between different parts of the map |
| Typical use | Brainstorming and quick notes | Showing how the ideas in a field fit together |
| Started by | Tony Buzan, 1970s | Joseph Novak, 1972 |
The choice depends on what you need to see. Use a mind map to collect ideas around one topic fast. Use concept mapping when you need to show that two parts of a subject depend on each other, and say how.
063 min
What research says about mind mapping
A map looks useful, but does it help people remember? The best-known test is a 2002 study by Paul Farrand, Fearzana Hussain and Enid Hennessy, who worked with medical students in London. Fifty second- and third-year students read one passage of about 600 words and took a short test on it. They were then split at random into two groups. One group studied the passage again with whatever method each student already used, and the other group was trained in mind mapping and applied it. Both groups were tested after an unrelated task and again a week later.
A week later, the mind map group's factual knowledge was 10% greater than the other group's, after adjusting for starting scores. That one result needs four careful readings.
The gain showed up a week later
Right after studying, both groups remembered more than they had at the start. Only the mind map group's gain was still solid after a week. In this test the difference appeared in what stayed in memory, not in what students could recall straight away.
How sure is the 10%?
The authors report a 95% confidence interval from -1% to 22%. A confidence interval is the range in which the true result plausibly lies. This one goes from a small loss to a large gain, so with 50 students the study cannot rule out that mind mapping did nothing.
The students liked it less
Students in the mind map group rated their motivation for the method lower than the other group did. The authors calculated that with equal motivation the gain would have been 15%, with an interval of 3% to 27%. That figure is a calculation from the data. It is not a result from a second experiment.
What the test covered
The test used one passage of about 600 words and measured recall of facts. It did not measure understanding, long texts, maps made by teams or memory after more than a week. Every participant was a medical student.
Other evidence
A systematic review collects the studies on one question using a fixed search method. A 2024 systematic review of mind mapping in medical education searched nine databases for work published between 2000 and 2023. It retrieved 63 articles and kept 10 for analysis. Its authors sorted the benefits they found into three groups: memory and understanding, intellectual growth, and easier learning and teaching. They also noted two challenges. Ten studies is a small base for firm conclusions.
Opinion surveys point the same way but measure feelings, not memory. In one comparison that the Wikipedia article on mind maps describes, students of art and design were far more positive about mind mapping software than students of computer and information technology. That is worth knowing for designers, but it is an opinion. It does not show that they learned more.
072 min
Claims about mind mapping that do not hold up
Several claims are often made about mind mapping. Some are wrong, and some cannot be checked.
The two-sided brain claim
One site that promotes mind mapping says a map is stronger because it uses all of the left and right brain thinking tools. The idea behind this is that some people are "left-brained" and others "right-brained". It has been tested. In 2013 a team at the University of Utah studied resting brain scans from 1011 people aged 7 to 29. Some connections are stronger on the left, such as those for language, and others on the right, such as those for attention. But the team found no sign that anyone has a stronger left-brained or right-brained network across the whole brain.
That does not mean mind maps fail. The 2002 result does not depend on the two-sided brain idea. It means the reason often given for the method is wrong, and the case for the method has to be based on tests like the one above.
The 12% grade figure
The same site says that a Johns Hopkins study found students who use mind maps raise their grades by 12%. The sentence gives no author, year or journal, so a reader cannot find the study. Until someone can, treat the number as a claim, not a finding.
Benefits that no study measured
Some guides also promise less stress, more productivity and better results for visual learners and for people with dyslexia or autism. The 2002 study measured none of these, so this article leaves those claims unchecked.
081 min
What real mind maps look like
Guides show tidy, colourful maps. In 2011 Joeran Beel and Stefan Langer checked what people actually make. They studied 19,379 maps made by 11,179 users of two mind mapping programs, Docear and MindMeister. The typical map was smaller than the guides suggest: its median size (the middle value) was 31 nodes, and each node usually held between one and three words. A node is one box or label on the map.
Most maps are worked on for a day or two
Most maps were edited on only one day (60.76%) or two days (18.41%). A typical user made about 2.7 maps a year. Advice often says a map should keep changing as thinking changes. In this sample, most maps got attention on one or two days only.
Few notes, few explanations
In 66.12% of maps there were few notes, if any. A map usually records labels, not the reasoning behind them. That suggests a reader who did not make the map often cannot tell why a branch is there.
The largest map
The extreme case was a map with 52,182 nodes, and one single node held 7,497 words. A map that size is no longer a quick overview. It works as a document.
092 min
When mind mapping is the wrong tool
The designer's map worked because the job was to group many separate items. Other jobs do not suit the method.
- The order matters. A procedure, a timeline or an argument has a sequence. A map spreads items around a centre, so it does not show which one comes first. Use a numbered list or a flow.
- The subject is dense. Guides warn that a map with too many branches becomes unreadable. If one branch keeps growing, give it its own map. A map also oversimplifies: a keyword cannot hold a detail, so the details must live somewhere else.
- Items belong in two places. Suppose a customer question asks about a refund after cancelling. It belongs under billing and under cancelling. A branch comes from only one other branch, so the designer must copy the question into both places or leave one out. A concept map or a table handles that better.
- It takes time and attention. Making a good map takes more effort than writing a list, and the benefit goes mainly to the person who makes it.
Beginners also tend to make the same mistakes: writing whole sentences on branches, drawing a perfectly symmetrical layout, and forgetting to show connections between ideas.
So use a mind map at the start, when you have a topic and many ideas and need to see their shape. Move to an outline, a table or a concept map once the shape is clear.
?4 questions
Questions people ask
Is a mind map the same as brainstorming?
Can a mind map have more than one centre?
How do I turn a mind map into an essay or report?
Do I need software, or is paper enough?
§9 sources
Sources
Farrand, P., Hussain, F., & Hennessy, E. (2002). The efficacy of the 'mind map' study technique. Medical Education, 36(5), 426-431. (full text: )
Beel, J., & Langer, S. (2011). An Exploratory Analysis of Mind Maps. Proceedings of the 11th ACM Symposium on Document Engineering, 81-84.
Nielsen, J. A., Zielinski, B. A., Ferguson, M. A., Lainhart, J. E., & Anderson, J. S. (2013). An evaluation of the left-brain vs. right-brain hypothesis with resting state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging. PLoS ONE, 8(8), e71275. (full text: )
Sajadi, A. S., Babajani, A., Maroufi, S. S., & Sarraf, N. (2024). Using the mind map method in medical education, its advantages and challenges: a systematic review. Journal of Education and Health Promotion, 13, 483. (full text: )
Show all 9 sourcesShow fewer sources
Novak, J. D., & Cañas, A. J. (2006). The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them. Institute for Human and Machine Cognition.
Wikipedia contributors. Mind map. Wikipedia.
Mind Map Inc. What is a Mind Map? mindmapping.com.
Interaction Design Foundation. Mind mapping. ixdf.org.
Mural. Mind maps: how to organize and connect your ideas. mural.co.
