Visual Envy & The Power of Mind Mapping

Am growing a bit tired of the appearance of this blog. It’s basically set-up from a blogger template and as my interests before all this started were in aesthetic usability design it seems a bit rich to present an awkward and ugly blog. I’ve seen some amazing blogs recently and love Chromasia with a passion. If only I could code (think he uses Movable Type) and run something similar. If I ever get a substantial period of free time I’ll do something like that probably. I also wonder whether I should put a counter or some metrics on here as I have no idea how many people read this. Does anyone read it who's never actually met me? If so, add a comment..

That said, simple sites work well too. A director here at work runs a blog on our intranet and his is bereft of images and typographic design – save for a lonely (if cheerful) mugshot at the top. The difference being his content is always engaging in both the corporate and personal sense and as such it speaks for itself. Hadn’t thought it before but perhaps he’s another Jakob Nielsen fan?

I spent some time looking around for blog entries on one of my favourite conversation topics – Simon Baron-Cohen’s theory of the systemising vs. empathising brain – and I stumbled upon PsyBlog (in reference to BBC Secrets of the Sexes) and MindHacks, two others to add to my blog watch list. PsyBlog is a simplistic design but no poorer for it and it featured an article on Mind Mapping too – another interest of mine. Read some related critique of this software-supported brainstorming but it hasn’t put me off using my recently acquired copy of Mindjet's MindManager – a piece of software I am nowhere near utilising to its maximum.

With that in mind, it’s off to mind map some ideas for new site designs. I’d wager ‘ideas’ is as far as they’ll get. As long as I don’t do as I’m tempted and rip-off the design of Adaptive Path.