The Digital Mindmap That’s Got Some Nerves
If you’re not familiar, MindNode is a mind-mapping digital platform that can be downloaded onto desktop, tablet, or mobile. It provides an easy way to write out all of your thoughts onto a visual board and you are able to edit it with different styles, colors, and fonts. While it is a tool that I have used on and off, there are definitely some improvements that could be made to the implementation of such a great tool.
Learnable
In my opinion, even as a Premium user, MindNode is certainly not a very beginner friendly tool. While the format is minimal with very little menu labels, that actually creates a bit of a guessing game for users. Particularly with regards to first-time users, there is no in-depth onboarding process, and most of the habilitation must be done by the user exploring and creating new nodes themselves. In terms of intuitive use, I personally continue to make the mistake of pressing [enter] and expecting a new child node to appear next to the one previously made, but it actually generates a sibling node underneath instead. The user is expected to press [tab]instead to create a new sideways node.
Memorability
Again, this goes back to the intuitive keys and functions that are not ingrained into the application’s functionalities. For instance, adding different nodes, whether parent, child or sibling, calls for consistent usage of the app in order to become familiar with it. The certain keys are not necessarily intuitive in my opinion, because as I opened the app recently which I hadn’t done in a while, I made the mistake of pressing [enter] with the intention to add a sibling node, but ended up making a new parent one underneath instead. Additionally, while the outline displayed on the left side of the program is helpful at times, it can also be confusing to organize the nodes in correlation with the mind-map which is front and center.
Satisfaction Level
MindNode is an app that toots itself on making brainstorming fast and easy. While it may be for some users, it’s been my experience that when I’m creating a vastly large and complicated tapestry of ideas in the brainstorm, I still limited: visually, the nodes are only kept on the right side (which probably springs from their desire to cater intuitively to left-to-right readers) but it actually makes my thoughts (and the visual complement of them) feel restricted. I am only able to change layout by manually moving them over which feels like putting the brakes on the gas when your mind is racing to jot all of your thoughts down- pretty counter intuitive, if you ask me.
The Darker Side of Subscription As a Service Models(SaaS)
These days, all the apps you see in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store are widely based on providing their services or products as a pay-per-month subscription. It makes sense from a business standpoint, because users are paying for the product regularly instead of in just one lump sum. However, I was able to personally experience for myself the shady parts of this model clearly arise when MindNode charged me after their 14 day trial period was over. There was a subtle email that was sent through iCloud, but whenever I physically opened up the app, there is no such reminder.
Many of us are buried in emails and daily tasks. Have you ever been there when you received an email reminder, find yourself reading the email, but notice that there’s another more urgent one, and end up forgetting about the first one you saw? No, this is not a case of ADHD, but rather an issue with usability, accessibility, and ethics.
Creating payment reminders in-app not only provides an ethical business practice, but can create the perfect opportunity for users to provide feedback on the product, giving developers and designers better insights into what can be done to improve and what’s already satisfactory for the users.
