Mind Mapping Software for Brainstorming: Which One Should You Try?

• It helps you collect ideas and collaborate with teammates visually, so you can better chart out relationships and hash out a plan to make them a reality;
• You can imagine new possibilities, thinking of the big picture, noticing gaps and so on;
• You can comment on the ideas by using digital pens or pencil tools;
• It can be used in many different fields for complex ideas, such as project planning, product launches, organizational charting, or novel-writing;
• You can think creatively rather than just linearly;

Edraw MindMaster 6.5

Edraw MindMaster is a great multi-platform based free mind map tool to visualize knowledge. It offers free and pro versions. The paid one has more built-in resources vector templates and cliparts covering various fields from business to education.

With the brainstorming function, users can quickly collect, label, drag and drop all ideas in different colors an font sizes on the drawing board, and set a timer to keep things on track and easily spot how many seconds are left. Furthermore, users can use the cursor or color pencil to add markups and annotations to their current mind map. If you wanna explore more relationships between your ideas, just easily inserting lines, arrows, callouts, summaries, boundaries and more in the Full-Screen mode.

Once done your brainstorming, you can use the preset slideshow function to auto-create a series of slides based on your mind map and use the keyboard shortcuts to traverse topics during your presentations.

WiseMapping

WiseMapping is a Java-based mind mapping software for brainstorming which offers an open source environment for users. At first, you need to sign up an account to log in the user interface based on Chrome, Safari, Opera, Explorer 8, and Firefox 14 or higher. WiseMapping has a quite straightforward drawing board with all the functional icons are shown in the ribbon. You can drag and drop topics, change text fonts, set simple layouts, insert hyperlinks and notes etc.

Coggle

Coggle is another mind mapping software for brainstorming that can do a real-time collaboration. Every team member can draw their own views under one mind mapping and then see others’ comments on the same map. What’s more, the tool has a Roulette-style formatting menu for users to modify maps such as adding new branches, creating links, choosing colors, setting layouts, inserting floating topics and images etc. You can also find your past editions that have been automatically saved by Coggle.

Popplet

Popplet is a handy mind mapping software for brainstorming for users to capture ideas, images, and relationships between topics. So far, Popplet is only available for online browsers and mobile iOS devices. Also, children ages under 12 are not able to open accounts so has to be monitored by guardians. Popplet can suit different screen sizes for its online and mobile user interface. Users can free to operate with both keyboard shortcuts and mouses on the unlimited drawing canvas as shown below.

Bubbl.us

The online mind map software for brainstorming Bubbl.us can easily turn your ideas into a brainstorming board with many preset editable colorful bubbles. The user interface is similar to the style of Google Docs for you to quickly pinch to zoom or expand topics or check out the boards of other users’ by clicking on the Public tab. The tool also automatically saves your mind map every two minutes, and users need to register an account to store mind maps online.

Conclusion

So far, we have checked out some of the good mind mapping software for brainstorming with their spotlights and cool built-in features. Feel free to try your favorite one right now based on a free download, or a free trial version before committing.