Here’s a quick summary of what we’re going to do: Pick something that you are working on, and use FreeMind to do a little brainstorm on how to improve it.  We’ll quickly create a sweet chart filled with ideas and inspiration that will turn the project from a hum-drum, rut filled chore into a feather in your cap.  If you’ve done GTD before, you’ll appreciate the end result: getting Stuff out of your head and into a document.

Step 1: Pick the Project

You have dozens of unfinished projects – we all do.  Pick one that may be interesting or that you’re stuck on.  It can be anything from redesigning your blog (see my screenshot, above), to a client project, to the greatest treehouse ever.

Step 2: Get the Tools

Download, install, and run Freemind, an open source Mind Mapping software.  I’ve also heard good things about MindManager, but it’s not free.  I’ll stick with Freemind for this one.

Step 3: Start the Map

Create a new Freemind project – you are now the proud owner of a little bubble in the middle of your screen.  Enter the title of your project in this bubble.

Now, come up with your top 3-5 areas of concern with this project.  Create one child node off of your bubble for each concern.  The keyboard shortcuts in Freemind are very important – it’s not the most immediately usable design, but remains manageable – so try to use the Tab, Enter, and Arrow keys to manage your nodes as you do this.

Step 4: Explore your Ideas

This is where the fun really happens.  Follow each area of concern all the way down the rabbit hole.  Chase it down your mind, logging sub nodes and notes, ideas and concerns, until each area of concern simply runs out of things to say.

In the process, you may find that there are other areas to note, reorganizations to make, or completely new ways of using the Mind Map.  That’s the great part about it – it’s relatively freeform, so you can make it match your thought process however you see fit.  I like to apply the built in icons to categorize various notes in the map.

Keep writing things down until you have exhausted the topic.  When you’re ready, call it done!

Step 5: Have a Beer

Don’t you feel better already?  You’ve offloaded all this Stuff from your mind, probably had some great new ideas, and made the project more manageable.

KomodoMedia‘s foliage-o-meter ™. (Shown above)

I’ve followed Rogie King’s KomodoMedia for a while now, but my mind wasn’t blown until he launched the foliage-o-meter.  You drag it in either direction to change the amount of foliage shown around the site. It’s so pointless and innocuous, yet it’s exciting.  There are many blogs and portfolio sites that are pretty, professional, slick, etc, etc.  Even great webdesign tends to get old, and this little gem has restored some of my faith in my ability to be surprised at the internet.

Flickr’s ever changing greeting.

Flickr greets people who have logged in with a “hello” in a new language each time. This feature has nothing to do with photo sharing, but it improves the experience of spending time on the site day after day.

Gmail and iGoogle‘s themes.

Millions of users spend countless hours staring at and navigating through Gmail and iGoogle’s interfaces.  Themes allow people to customize the graphics to something more exciting.  Many of the themes change throughout the day based on time or even weather.  Although there are a few naysayers in the IxDA community, the general reaction on the web seems to be overwhelmingly positive.

Meowmi‘s cloud house.

Exploring Meowmi gives your inner child a minute to shine right through. As illustrators, they can get away with the overdose of cuteness, but the site has been made with an attention to detail and an attitude that refuses to take itself too seriously.

So what?

It’s standard practice to design with our user’s goals in mind. Too often, though, we tend to focus only on the immediate goals: Send an Email, Download a File, Do my Taxes.  Although we may produce usable and successful designs, we have ignored the user’s larger context.

They may be bored, tired, at work, grinding away at a long term deliverable.  They may be entering countless rows of data into a spreadsheet.  People love to have fun. Without sacrificing usability, let’s bring a little fun into our designs.