Collaborative Mind-Mapping: A Study of Patterns, Strategies, and Evolution of Maps Created by Peer-Pairs

Abstract

We present a study on collaborative mind-mapping to understand how peers collaborate in pairs to create mind-maps, how the maps evolve over time, and how collaboration changes between the peer-pair across multiple maps. Mind-mapping is an important tool that is studied and taught in design practice and research respectively. While widely used as a brainstorming technique, the collaborative aspects of mind-mapping are little understood in comparison to other ideation methods such as concept sketching etc. In addition to presenting creativity ratings on the outcome (i.e. the mind-map), we extensively report on the patterns of collaborative exploration, strategies that emerge from the collaborators, inhibition, and the overall process of map creation. We discuss the implications of these observations on the development of computer-support for mind-mapping.