Mind Map Template
Capture your ideas and see the big picture at a glance with the Mind Map Template. Improve your brainstorms with this unique technique.
About the Mind Map Template
The Mind Map Template is a well-organized, graphic representation of your next brainstorm. Ideal for visual learners, this method lacks the rigid structure of other ideation techniques, focusing instead on the free association of concepts and ideas, connecting creative and logical thinking.
Keep reading to learn more about the Mind Map Template.
What is a mind map?
A mind map is a diagram designed to organize information in a visual hierarchy. It’s often used to see connections between concepts or ideas. Think of it as a tree. The center of your mind map — or its trunk — is the subject, question, or problem you’re trying to solve. Once you’ve established your trunk, your brainstorm begins. As your team jots down all their ideas, topics, and subtopics, the branches of your mind map will start to form.
When to use a Mind Map Template
Mind mapping is one of the best ways to capture your thoughts and bring them to life in visual form. Beyond just note-taking, mind maps can help you and your team become more creative, enhance memory, and solve problems more effectively.
Mind mapping is a useful exercise for almost any purpose. Whether you’re doing some personal journaling or your team needs to rethink a process, feature, or product, it’s a powerful tool to have in your brainstorming tool belt.
Professionals of many industries apply this technique to boost creativity and develop out-of-the-box solutions, as it’s very easy to learn how to mind map. It’s a great tool for creative professionals and product owners, developers, business managers, and teachers.
How to use the Mind Map Template
Mind mapping is simple with Miro’s free template. You can fill it in as you brainstorm on your own, or collaboratively with your team, whatever fits best in your work mode (remote or in-person).
See below how to use the Mind Map Template in Miro:
Select the Mind Map Template Afterward, share the link with your team to plan a mind mapping session.
Start with the central concept
The center of your mind map (or trunk) is the specific question or idea central to getting to the bottom of your topic or solving your problem. Type it in the center of the Mind Map Template.
Brainstorm
Give your team 5 minutes to write down the first idea that comes to mind when thinking about the main concept. You can use images, words, or short phrases. Remember, this is a quick exercise meant to encourage free thinking.
Extend your mind map
Write down ideas as branches that extend from the center of your mind map. Once you’re ready to move or structure ideas, hold down Ctrl or Cmd and click on concepts to drag and rearrange the branches.
Develop branches
Once you have your first set of branches mapped out, choose one branch and ask yourselves: Where else can we take this? What is a related concept or problem? Then, draw a branch extending from the first branch and put your second idea at the end.
Continue until a stop
Repeat the process until you feel like you’re at a good stopping point.
Try changing the color and orientation of your mind map, or introducing things like sticky notes, images, or emojis.
Mind Map examples
Creating a mind map is very straightforward. You just need time and a shared space to write down your ideas and concepts. Mind mapping can be about any topic.
Let’s say you want to explore a product feature, like video calls. You can have this feature at the center of your mind map and from there draw branches with related topics or concepts, such as communication, team building, online meetings, and so on. Soon enough, you can visualize topic clusters around video calls and can quickly identify which ones you think are worth exploring further and which ones might not make sense at the moment.
It’s always helpful to ask some questions along the way like “Where is this leading?” or “What is it?”, so you know which concepts are leading you to the expected results.
If you want to know more and improve your mind mapping skills, access our quick guide to mind mapping.
How do you write a mind map?
A Mind Map is a diagram of ideas that links one central topic/idea to other related concepts. To create a mind map, choose the topic you want to develop and add it to the center of your map. Afterward, write ideas related to that topic, in the form of branches coming out of your map’s center. Repeat this process when developing your mind map branches until you have the desired amount of ideas.
What is a mind map example?
Imagine that you would like to cover topics about art history. At the center of your mind map, you will have the concept “art history,” and around it, you can start writing everything that relates to it, for example, paintings, sculptures, artists, and so on. At the end of your mind map, you will have many concepts related to art history and topic clusters, so you can quickly identify how you could talk about art history.
How do I make a mind map template?
You can easily make a Mind Map Template in Miro either using our example or drawing one from scratch. Miro’s infinite canvas allows you to write down as many concepts as you like and save this framework and share it with your team so they can copy it or consult later on.
Get started with this template right now.
Dot Voting Template
Works best for:
Decision Making, Meetings, Workshops
Dot voting, also known as “sticker voting,” “dotmocracy,” or “voting with dots”, allows teams to point out issues in a series of potential solutions or to prioritize tasks when presented with various options. Dot voting is different from the default “one-share” or “one-vote” rule. Instead, each person in the group is given as many votes (or “points”) as can be filled. Those votes can either all be cast for one idea, or distributed among many ideas. You can use dot voting any time your team prioritizes options or agrees on a direction to take for a high-stakes project.
UML Component Diagram Template
Works best for:
Mapping, Diagrams, Software Development
Use our Component Diagram template to show how a system’s physical components are organized and wired together. Visualize implementation details, make sure planned development matches system needs, and more — all in a collaborative environment.
Decision Tree Template
Works best for:
Decision Making, Mind Mapping, Diagrams
Making difficult decisions gets easier when you can look clearly at your choices and visualize the outcomes. That’s just what a decision tree will help you do, empowering you to invest your time and money with confidence. A decision tree is a flowchart that looks just how you’d imagine—with “branches” that represent your available choices. It provides a stylized way to play out a series of decisions and see where they lead before you commit your real-world resources, which is especially valuable for startups and smaller companies.
Lotus Diagram Template
Works best for:
UX Design, Ideation, Diagrams
Even creative thinkers can use occasional help thinking creatively, to see things in fresh ways and generate brilliant ideas. A Lotus Diagram will give them new inspiration — and empower you to run smoother, more effective brainstorming sessions. This creative-thinking technique explores ideas by putting the main idea at the diagram center and ancillary concepts in the surrounding boxes. This template gives you an easy way to create Lotus Diagrams for brainstorms, as well as an infinite canvas for the endless ideas generated.
Start, Stop, Continue Retrospective Template
Works best for:
Retrospectives, Meetings, Workshops
Giving and receiving feedback can be challenging and intimidating. It’s hard to look back over a quarter or even a week and parse a set of decisions into “positive” and “negative.” The Start Stop Continue framework was created to make it easier to reflect on your team’s recent experiences. The Start Stop Continue template encourages teams to look at specific actions they should start doing, stop doing, and continue doing. Together, collaborators agree on the most important steps to be more productive and successful.
UML State Machine Diagram Template
Works best for:
Software Development, Mapping, Diagrams
Visualize the workflow of a process and how objects perform actions based on different stimuli. State machine diagrams are valuable for understanding how an object responds to events at the different stages of its life cycle. They are also helpful for visualizing event sequences in a system.