Mindmap: the Most Powerful Invention to Prioritize Product Development- Startup Week 18
We all want to get the best digital tool in our hand. The better tool we have, the smarter decision we can make. That makes one closer or sometimes skip multiple steps to reach our goal. If you’re a productivity guru like me, I’m sure you heard of mindmapping. It’s a notetaking technique that extends your brainpower.
I first tried Mindmapping 5 years ago fresh out of university. At the time, I was such a productivity nerd to stay competitive, I would jump into any technique to boost every minute I had. Yet, I was equally cheap. I quickly ran out of the free plan of 3 maps. I got rid of it never looking back.
But that’s no longe true. This week, I finally bought Mindmap by Mindmeister.
The reason is this Japanese YouTuber I started watching. He talks about financial literacy. What’s unique about him is he only talks through Mindmap alone. He never shows his face the entire time. With this mindmap presentation alone, he’s acheived 100,000 subscribers. The content is that easy to follow. I was stuned. It’s so easy to deliver information without a single fancy cartoon. He was of course a big advocate of mindmap tool.
I’ve been loving it so far. Mindmeister offers $5/mo plan with further annual discount (they actually send me a 20% discount email). I want to share how I use this mindmap to layout my feature development plan.
What About Free Alternatives?
I used to use Trello to brainstorm my ideas. Trello is amazing at organizing your todo and managing tasks. It’s all free of course. But there’s so much hierarchy you can go down. At the high level, there is a board name, column, card title. Inside the card, you have title, checklist title, and each checklist. They are only 3 nestings of ideas. That seems like a standard in productivity tool. But in brainstorming, you want to cover as deep as possible. It can easily go 7 level deep.
Silicon Valley the TV show shows sticky notes all over the big whiteboard. It’s the good old paper and pen approach. But that’s the communication tool. Brainstorm your messy idea will make a mess quickly. You cant use it. What wasn’t helping me was my terrible handwriting. I just cant comprehend my own writing. It’s like as I write the pace of writing cant keep up with the pace of thought. I think I would have been brain dead in the pre-computer era.
Examples of Mindmapping in Product Development
I want to demonstrate the power of mindmap over a conventional method. To make it easy, I will walk through how I use it for my product development.
When developing a product feature in startup, we need to think through all different kinds of ideas and pitfalls. It will get chaotic soon to list out all branches. Let’s give that a try in paper (blog post).
Here’s the first level given the hypothetical title “feature development”.
- Why
- List all potential features
- A way to measure its successful outcome
That’s not too bad so far. Here comes the second level.
Why?
- Is it because someone has requested?
- Is it to increase the retention rate?
- Is it to validate new value prop?
You answer each question and the why branches ends here.
Each is very important. In the startup world, feature development based on request needs to be carefully examined.
List all potential features
- For example, I was making a library page where users can see all their article history. You can list all the stuff that goes inside the page. But let’s just keep it as a library page for now.
This is where it starts to get complicated. For each feature, you analyze appeal and risk. Feel free to skip the details:
A way to measure its successful outcome
- Qualitative feedback from core users
- Quantitative feedback from usage data
Appeal
- Appeal to existing users
- Appeal to new users
- Appeal to you personally
- Appeal to teammate
Risk
- Time requirement
- Architecture requirement
- Financial requirement
Of all, time is the most precious element startups have.
Time requirement
- How quickly you can get feedback
- Research and learning time
- Development time
- Shipment time (now Google Store is taking more than 2 weeks to review Kaffae’s extension update)
I won’t go any more detail into the other two architectural and financial requirements.
As you can tell, in blog post, it offers 4 level breakdown. Big headline, sub headline, italic, and listings. In other words, papers on the flat surface is terrible at narrating your idea. The same thing can be said about the Markdown. It’s just not enough.
By now, it’s almost impossible to follow branches on the paper. This is where Mindmap comes in handy. Here’s what all the above points look like.
You can visualize it in one glance and very easy to come back. Of course, you can close each point to make it easier to read.
Even though it costs $5/mo, it’s well worth the payoff. You can check out other mindmap companies. I tried Miro too which offers similar features, though Miro costs slightly more.
Of course I used it to write this blog. I highly recommend it to upcoming professionals in the intellectual industry.
PS: This post came off like a product endorcement, but that’s how much I like this tool. Of course, don’t forget to check out my app Kaffae — a easy reflection tool to boost your critical thinking;)
