A complete mindmapping solution for all of us who prefer visual organization of information
As a predominantly visual person I need to see “the whole picture” when designing a new project and I do a lot of mindmapping on almost daily basis. I have the master mindmap with the key projects I am working on that branch out to smaller activities, tasks and deliverables and most of my notes related to the development are within the mindmap. As MindMeister offers a good number of icons to tag the individual branches I could clearly keep track of whole scope of the project and use the same space to add any ideas/notes I might have at the moment. Since you can easily collapse all the branches you are not using at the moment it really gives clarity and at the same time it helps me not to lose track of some processes or smaller deliverables that I could easily overlook in the task manager software I use. It also offers the integration with Meister Task so you can easily turn any branch into a task with deadlines and all. For me personally, the best use of mind maps is for brainstorming and planning stages of a project and I usually start by creating a map myself, adding ideas, processes and deliverables into it, and then sharing it with my colleagues at a meeting, which is usually followed by our joint work on the same map if the idea is chosen for the development. The app itself allows for all these, it has good visual interface, so after finding it and using it for a month I did not search for any other alternatives anymore.
Pros
As I use mind maps a lot I love to be able to have them available everywhere I go and to share them with my colleagues so we can work together on the same mind map. It offers everything mindmapping software should offer and it does it online (or through mobile app) so the only thing I need is the internet connection. The maps look very nice, there is a good number of templates and options (both map structures and design templates) so if you need a good mindmapping software I that is platform independent I could really recommend this one as I tried a couple of others before finding it. When you share the mind map with colleagues things get really great, especially during the ideation and planning stage of a project as everyone can add branches, expand on ideas which really helps make meetings more effective later.
Cons
This app also has the presentation mode that I have not found so useful. I see how it might be great to be able to present your mindmap to others instead of boring them with a slideshow, but I did not use it, so this would be the only thing that I am not really ‘digging 100%. In essence, there is nothing bad about the app that I would highlight as it does its core function (mindmapping) really well. Of course, the free version has some limitations in terms of number of maps you can make and the export formats, but even the basic version can be enough for most users’ needs.