MindShare, mapped in MindShare

MindShare sits in the middle, and around it the building blocks every graph is made of: nodes, links, properties, the Detail panel, filters, layout and the rest. Each feature hangs off the building block it belongs to, so the filter features gather around Filters and the shapes around Visuals.

The edges of the knowledge graph follow the edges of the app. The buttons of the top toolbar run along the top, the left toolbar sits on the left, and the panels and messages that appear on the right of the screen line the right side. Wherever you are in the graph, you can see where that part of the app is.

Everything about an idea. A node has a name drawn inside its shape, a type that decides its shape and colour, a size, a description and, if you want, properties and pictures. On the canvas you see only the name. Click the node and the Detail panel opens on the right with the rest: the description, the properties, the gallery and every connected node, each introduced by the name of the link.

Click one of those connections and the canvas flies to that node and opens its panel. That is how you read a whole subject: one panel at a time, without the canvas ever getting crowded.

Point at a node. The node and the links to its neighbours stand out, and the rest of the graph steps back. Move the pointer away and everything returns. It answers the most common question about any idea without a single click, and it works on every node in every graph.

When the neighbour you want is far away, double-click it and the canvas flies there.

Big graphs are useful because they hold everything, and hard to read for the same reason. Open the legend and click one type: every other node fades. For anything finer, build a filter on a type, a kind of connection or any property, combine filters with AND and OR, and choose whether the nodes you filtered out fade or disappear.

In this knowledge graph, click Use Case in the legend and only the five showcases remain.

Nowhere, until you say so. When you paste JSON on the home screen, MindShare checks it in your browser, and nothing reaches the server until you click Persist on server. Once a graph is persisted, Share copies a link that reopens it exactly as you see it: the same place, the same node open, the same filters on. Download gives you the whole graph back as a JSON file.

Any product can be explained this way: software, a service, a machine, an internal process. Make its main parts the building blocks, hang each feature off the part it belongs to, and connect features to the controls that use them and to the examples that show them. A new team member then learns the product the way this page teaches MindShare. See how properties and types work, or ask us for help preparing the data.