Gliffy Mindmaps
Lead Designer & Director of UX, 2012-2016
The ability to create Mindmaps was a highly requested feature for Gliffy and during one of our hackathons, Clint (one of Gliffy's cofounders) put together a mindmapping prototype that allowed users to add subtopics to a shape in Gliffy by clicking on a grey arrow just outside the shape which would then spawn a new shape connected to the existing shape. This meant a user wouldn't have to drag shapes from the sidebar and go through the hassle of connecting lines to shapes. It won our hackathon contest and the team agreed that it would be a good feature to add to the app.
However, because none of us really had domain expertise in mindmapping and because I wanted to use our newly established process for getting feedback from users, I sent the prototype to 2 separate groups - our customer advisory team and people who requested the feature in Zendesk and got very different responses.
Advisory team responses
Users who requested the feature on zendesk
"Most of the time, but especially when facilitating brain-storming, I prefer to use the keyboard exclusively." - Jon Roberts
"When I am rapidly trying to compose ideas, not having to reach for the mouse makes a significant difference." -Vincent Jayawardene
"Flow" is really important when creating mind maps to me, so no keyboard method (at least that I could tell) to add more children to current object was really missed." -Paul Hibbitts
While customers on our advisory team thought that the interaction was pretty straightforward like we did, those who requested the feature didn't. I wasn't familiar with mindmapping apps so I tried existing mind mapping apps noted common features among them. I also interviewed users and had them rank the most important features and learned that the bare minimum for a mindmapping feature would allow them to:
- add ideas and branches quickly using only the keyboard
- navigate around a diagram using only the keyboard
- collapse and show branches and sub-branches
- differentiate between different parent ideas and their children
While Gliffy would never be as fully featured as a dedicated mindmapping app, these added capabilities allowed users to create simple mindmaps in a way that was intuitive to them.
