Concept Maps

version: 1.0
date: 2001-11-11 16:05:19

Usage of UML-ish Concept Maps for explicating complex topics.

2.2005 update
Rediscovered concept maps , and am finding them very helpful in visualizing the whole system we are developing right now.

2001
jre resolved, it was a path prob. Sitemap now exists on marge, fire up those clients and start playing around with it.

installed on marge*, there is a jre issue. cmap is great as a collaborative environment. I'll be porting Doug's sitemap image into cmap, with each element linking to related elements and attaching a knowledge base/discussion thread to elements as needed.

Content maps are a means to share knowledge about a project/object and to collaborate in development.

Components of the content map application

  • Content map server - this is the core tool for creating/storing/sharing concept maps
  • Discussion Thread server - this is the server component that handles/stores threaded conversations about an element or set of elements
  • Soup Server - this is a knowledge base that hold proposed ideas/actions about a particular map, element in a map, or set of maps or set of elements from several maps.

Knowledge Soups allow users to create maps that they don't necessarily share with other members of the project. One can take notes in their scratchpad and choose which notes to add to the public knowledge base and which ones to further refine or discard.

Users can add images, movies, and text resources to a concept map, providing intuitive access to all collateral material for a given element.

At this stage of review, I see the concept maps as a means to collaborate on a high level about a project or set of projects (sitemap/wireframes, level 1 & 2 requirements, etc) and to drill down to the desired level of granularity. The ability for users to work on the same document without emails and attachments is a definite plus, though the lack of versioning is less than ideal. I'm considering doing daily backups of the database in order to maintain the diffs, though frequency may need to be increased over time.

The client tool (editor) is available for Windows, Mac, Solaris, and Linux, so cross platform collaboration is not a problem. There is also a web interface which I have not yet dealt with and will report on at greater length soon.

*machine names are Simpson themed