Here is my totally hypothetical high-budget brainstorm on where you could take this…

subtitle: the flip-side to the collaborative 3D environment coin

How about a 3D version of a personal mind map: where the “idea starting-point/ending-point”, or “top-level of idea hierarchy” would start out as your 3d reference point/viewpoint/vantage-point (whatever). We mean an avatarless 3rd person perspective i.e. 3D shooter as apposed to Tombraider or Second-Life, but I was thinking something that looked more like Autocad ( ; Anyways, you would create other idea points and linky-lines that extend out from that location etc.. then you could move your “minds eye” or vantage-point to those other idea points to gain a different “perspective”, literally and conceptually. This would operate in a completely 360 environment with an endless black background, i.e. focus on the ideas not graphics. Ideas points (clouds, roundy things) themselves could be an assortment of “text-pages” or “pictures” (or laser scanned 3d objects in the premium version haha) that you could float your 3d brain perspective-point over/around/rotate-from-inside-of and read-look at

Of course the icing on the cake would be to do all this using virtual reality glasses/gloves, ie manipulate the mindmap in 3d as well. Kind of similar to how our brains our structure too, i.e. neural network.

if something like this has been done before (this is all easily feasible with 1994 technology) let me know..!!

Wonderful points about the 3D mind map. As these are very early prototypes, I think we’re in the early days of refining them. Your comments have been echoed by others, in particular around the time it takes to get over the ‘annoying’ part, I suppose is the best word for it.

I’m not convinced we’ve yet struck on exactly the right visual cues to make the mind maps perfectly intuitive. The work that Jeff has done, for example, which has been used at ThinkBalm, ends up with the difficulty of a stationary mind map and the need to cam around to be able to read the floating text, and the prototype we did, wherein the nodes move, makes it easy to lose track of where your nodes are!

Part of the issue is technical, I think: the use of float text over prims is a clunky solution. Making the nodes move so they don’t overlap is one way of allowing unlimited nodes (or branches) but can make it difficult to create a sense of hierarchy or to highlight which branches are newly added etc.

However, I’ll make a few points I suppose: one, because these are early prototypes it’s also early days, and the insights of yourself and others is helping to provide insight into what works and what doesn’t There are a few plans in the works to increase their functionality, and I’ll touch on a few of them:

- Cross-integration (real time) to a 2D Web site. This will be useful for ongoing mind maps where participants can come and add branches at their leisure, for team projects say, like specification trees.
- Branch ‘voting’, similar in some ways to what Keystone did with Wikitecture where branches can be voted on, and branches ‘fall off’. In fact, I keep returning to Keystone’s tree, because I think it may be a more intuitive symbol that works in 3D.
- Addition of notecards, textures, and other content within the branches.
- Thoughts around different visual symbols other than nodes and branches.

Now, having said that, you bring up an incredibly useful question: what exactly IS the third dimension of the mind map? What is it adding that a 2D mind map DOESN’T have? In my experience, the dimension has been presence – there’s something about being able to voice or text chat with other people present that is the equivalent to a brainstorm session “live” – but I can’t always fly folks in to do a brainstorming and so use SL as a platform for this. Mind you, I also use teleconference calls, Skype, and asynchronous e-mail: it’s all about using the right tool for the right job.

Where I’ve seen the mind maps used most effectively is when they are ‘recording devices’ for group discussion. Rather than as the focus, a moderator or ‘nod(t)e taker’ documents the conversation to provide an artefact of the brainstorm session.

So…I totally agree. There’s more work to be done. And that’s the fun part: I’m convinced that as one of many tools, mind maps are simply examples of the range of collaborative tools that is arising in virtual worlds that may, in SOME cases, supplement, replace or be an option IN ADDITION to other brainstorming techniques.

On that note, I have also really enjoyed polling systems in SL. I was trying to find the link to the “vote by standing” poll you talked about. I know IBM had one – I had a tour of it at NMC and it seemed very effective.

But thinking about other brainstorming methodologies – red dot exercises, clustering, scenarios, etc. I think there’s a lot of rich terrain to explore.

Land use planning: again, I agree. In fact, I personally believe that virtual worlds for land planning and architecture are having difficulty for a number of reasons, one of the main reasons being scale and camera control. You can plan a city street to scale, but if you walk through it, especially with our 8 foot avatars and cameras that hover another foot above us, it won’t “feel right” and so presents problems. I’d defer to architects on this question. (I’m sure they’d also argue that inability to import meshes and architectural files is also problematic).

I like Erica’s term “Immersive Internet” (or maybe not her term, but the one she has adopted) because it’s a heck of a lot easier to understand that “Metaverse”. I like it because it reminds us that the tools and approaches we’re adapting now don’t JUST have application in virtual worlds, but that virtual worlds are part of a wider trend towards more immersive 3D spaces that include mirror worlds, virtual worlds, life logging and augmented reality.

The work we’re doing now on 3D mind maps in a virtual world, for example: one day, those same tools will be used as part of an augmented reality exercise in a “real” room in which the 3D mind map will be layered onto the atomic space.

Google Earth will one day include avatars (or mirror worlds, like Twinity, will provide deeper utility) because for urban planning, it will be important to have plans ‘at scale’ with layered GIS and other info, and the option to “port in” will be used sparingly but effectively, much as architects simulate ‘walk-throughs’ now.

Very exciting times, because the work we’re seeing now is planting the seeds, providing the lessons, and establishing the code base and insights that will help shape the wave of parallel innovation to come.

I must take exception with the 3D mind map. I’ve used them in ThinkBalm and Metanomics. I find them harder to use than their 2D predecessors because nodes eclipse each other and other objects in the scene. Either the mind map is stationary and one must move around to “look” at the node information, or they are moving and eclipsing – orderly but annoying. If the third dimension were used for something functional my opinion would be different but as far as I seen it’s just used because it’s there.

I do agree with Erica, you and the many other virtual world enthusiasts, they are more engaging. But just adding a third dimension doesn’t make something better. Another example is shown in the Flickr link from the ThinkBalm Figure #1 in your article, a four color square target for polling. Even the results of this polling system (3D color-coded bars) are no better then the 2D version.

However, there was a potential voting system I came across a couple of years ago where people were asked to meet in the DC mall at locations that demonstrated there “stood” on a two dimensional issue. Then people near you had their opinions in common with you on those issues. Of course, in a virtual world we have full three dimensions available to us so we could “float” our opinions on three issue dimensions at a time.

On your other topic, Hub2, wow! Land use planning – there’s a great use of virtual worlds. Of course that’s been known for a long time but Hub2 really brought it home to me. But my contrarian questions are: Are avatars needed? Should this be done in Second Life or Google Earth?

Again, thanks for your insights and links.

Think of it as a 3D version of the following: http://debategraph.org/