Project 2: Divergent Design
Feature Brainstorming
Idea Cards: Introduce a card-like feature that empowers users to capture spontaneous ideas. These idea cards support various data types, including written text and URL paths, allowing users to represent a diverse range of information within their idea pool.
Mind map: A visual representation of hierarchical and interconnected ideas present in idea cards. The mind map can be represented with cards representing the content of the ideas and arrows linking ideas.
AI-Driven Suggestions: An idea generator that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to analyze the existing content of a mind map. It then generates suggestions for new connections between the ideas in the mind map and those still unexplored in the idea cards related to that project.
Suggested Connection Strength: Provide users with an indication of the perceived strength or relevance of suggested connections, whether generated by the user or the AI idea generator. This feature aids users in prioritizing and selecting the most impactful links for their mind maps.
Idea Pool: Establish a centralized repository for idea cards not assigned to specific projects. Users can reference this idea pool later, fostering a comprehensive and organized collection of ideas.
Share: Enable users to seamlessly import idea cards from the idea pool into specific projects, facilitating the reuse of individual ideas. Additionally, users can share entire projects with collaborators, fostering collaborative ideation.
Feedback on Mind Map: Empower users to provide feedback on generated mind maps directly to the AI system, contributing to continuous improvement and customization of AI-generated content.
Collaborators: Facilitate collaboration by allowing project authors to invite collaborators via email or usernames. Collaborators can actively contribute ideas, provide suggestions, and offer feedback within the shared project space.
Discussion Panel: Enhance collaborative storytelling by providing a dedicated discussion panel for collaborators within the mind map. This feature promotes real-time feedback and ensures the cohesive development of ideas.
Words of Wisdom: Offer users unblocking tips sourced from fellow creators when facing creative blocks, fostering a supportive community and overcoming obstacles collectively.
Emotionally Intelligent Feedback: A feature that provides emotionally intelligent feedback to the creator as they work on their mind map, thus motivating the creator and offering support against negative feelings such as self-doubt.
Time Block: Integrate the app with existing calendar tools to create dedicated time blocks for users to focus on creative activities, promoting a structured approach to ideation.
Color Theme: Implement a dynamic color theme generator, adapting the visual elements of mind maps based on user preferences or the nature of the content. This feature enhances visual appeal and customization.
Dark Mode: Enhance user comfort during extended usage in low-light environments by providing a dark mode option for the mind mapping interface.
Read Aloud: Cater to auditory learning preferences and accessibility needs by integrating a read-aloud feature that vocalizes the content of the mind map.
Feed of Mind Maps: Foster a sense of community and shared creativity by providing a feed where users can explore and draw inspiration from the mind maps of others.
Plagiarism Check: Ensure the originality of ideas within mind maps through a plagiarism check feature, maintaining the integrity of user-generated content.
Inspirational Questions: Encourage deeper exploration of thoughts and ideas by presenting users with inspirational questions, sparking new avenues of creative thinking.
User Analytics: Offer detailed analytics on user behavior and mind map evolution, providing valuable insights into usage patterns and creative processes.
Offline Mode: Enhance accessibility and flexibility by allowing users to work on their mind maps without an internet connection, ensuring uninterrupted ideation.
Weekly Creative Prompts: Stimulate creativity through regular prompts, inspiring users to generate fresh and innovative ideas consistently.
Export PDF/PNG/CSV: Facilitate easy sharing and integration by allowing users to export their mind maps in various formats, including PDF, PNG, and CSV.
Concept Outline
Selected Core Features
- Shareable Idea Cards (Notes & Reference URLs): This feature includes two types of idea cards: Notes and URLs. Idea cards serve as building blocks for creating mind maps. Users can connect these idea cards to draw and visualize their mind maps.
- Shareable Project: Users can share their projects, including the mind maps created using idea cards, with other users by using their usernames.
- Suggest & Autocomplete Mind Map: While working on a mind map, our app suggests the next connection and idea block. Users can easily accept these suggestions to autocomplete their mind maps.
- Discussion Panel: Users collaborating on the same project can use the discussion panel to chat and refer to (tag) specific idea blocks and connections within their mind maps.
Concepts
concept MindMap<Block>
purpose organize and visualize ideas in a hierarchical and interconnected manner
principle A block can be added/removed to a mindmap using add/remove. Blocks can be connected to other blocks using lines or arrows using connect and disconnected using disconnect.
concept Autosuggestion<User, Project, Resource>
purpose enhance speed and efficiency of a user's work by providing intelligent suggestions and autocompletions, minimizing repetitive tasks
principle When provided with the current project version and available resources, the system suggests the next move or transition to a newer version to the user. The user can choose to accept the suggestion to transition to the next version automatically, or reject the suggestion.
concept Team<User, Item>
purpose facilitate persistent sharing of items and enable collaboration among users
principle Users can create a team using the create operation. Team members can then invite other users to join the team using the invite operation. Items can be added to the team using the addItem operation. When working on shared items, users can use other shared items as needed.
concept Discussion<User, Item>
purpose enable users to have conversations and discussions related to specific items
principle A discussion can be created using the create operation, and users can be added to the discussion using the add operation. Within the discussion, users can send messages using the send operation. In these messages, users have the ability to tag specific items, allowing other users viewing the message to easily locate and navigate to the tagged item.
Comparables
Product Positioning:
After analyzing popular creativity-boosting tools available on mainstream platforms, we identified four primary content formats:
- Canvas: a comprehensive, unlimited-size page that can place most kinds of content. Great for collaboration. However, the contents become unreadable when zoomed out, and the performance drops dramatically during collaboration.
- Mindmap: scattered nodes with limited content lengths. The content types vary from text images to audio. Nodes are organized by their logical relationships, with clear hierarchies.
- Documents: text-heavy pages, suitable for content with large amounts of structured texts and images. It allows for detailed, linear presentation and organization of information.
- Flashcards: use cards as the basic element to organize knowledge. It is helpful for memorization and the study of discrete pieces of information. Suitable for usage of scattered time.
We want to position our app into the quadrant of collaboration and simplicity. Providing core functions that are tailored for the early phase of idea generation, and put stress on the magic of collective creativity.
Study of Creativity Boosting Tools
Canvas-based apps
- Canvas: Canvas based apps usually offer a large set of functionalities. With a large set of templates, interactive reactions, and imitation of real stationery (especially Miro and FigJam), it provides users with a familiar interface to interact with. Templates that fit common practices can help the user jumpstart their projects. Mind map and note taking, in this case, is one of many features. The drawback of having too many features is unavoidable redundancy and distraction with all kinds of tools and information.
MindMap-based apps
- Mindmap: The mindmap-based apps are good for the organization of scattered thoughts and ideas in multiple forms. Some software has invented features suitable for specific usage scenarios, such as the measurement function offered by MindMup.com. It assigns each node a number and is suitable for calculating the budget. Many products also offer convenient translation between different representations of the mindmap forms, including linear, radial, 3d, and presentation modes, by turning nodes into slides. Lekh offers a convenient sketch-to-shape recognition function, which is very useful in mobile use cases.
Document-based apps
- Documents: The document-based apps are usually designed for structuralized note-taking. It suits the type of brainstorming that relies on linear thinking and large amounts of content. This product form is good for sharing and serious writing but may not be ideal for capturing fleeting thoughts. The innovative features concentrated on how to organize the documents. OneNote is one of the most structuralized apps that follows the logic of real notebooks.
Flashcard-based apps
- Flashcards: Flashcard apps typically have multiple view styles, table view, and card view. When viewed by card, the user can see only one card at a time. It may be good for focusing on one content but not ideal for organizing random ideas. Features like achievements that stimulate people to learn are helpful for designing our app.
Storyboard and sketches
Creating a shared project
Add an idea into a project
Constructing a Mind map
Citation
- GPT to assist with idea brainstorming.