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Ask HN: What would a note taking app for visual learners look like?

6 points by johnnyliaw121 ↗ HN
I've recently been thinking about the way we note take in general, reflecting on my experiences with Notion, OneNote and many more. Even though these products are fantastic at what they do, as a highly visual learner it seems to be missing features such as mindmaps, intra-diagram highlighting and annotating, and many other potential features.

Anyone else has had this thought before? Comment down below what you think a the perfect note taking app for visual learners should look like!

5 comments

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jriley12
Ugh, I'm not sure. I feel like Drawing programs like Libreoffice kinda work. But at the end drawing and be able to erase with a real pencil and paper is the best for me until you have a good idea ahead of time of what you want to draw.
themodelplumber
One of the concepts I've found really works well for dreamers/creators/organizers is the blank slate. I call this Rebasing--creating psychological distance from the previous, less-desired mental state in order to bring about a new, desired mental state. A LOT of people tell me that they need to move from digital to paper as part of this process. (I have some weird theories as to why this is)

What I learned from there is that it's also important in many cases to move from paper back to digital, capturing what you developed on paper and integrating it, where possible, back into the "previous" thing, ideally making the previous thing into something else. Something better, maybe lighter, etc. Otherwise what can happen is that lessons go unlearned, thoughts that really should have been remembered or communicated don't get remembered, etc.

themodelplumber
Good stuff. I've been developing a concept called the Capture Map, which is like a meta-model in which things like mind maps can live. It's very visual, but also organizational and modular. You can start such a map with a journaling node, then add separate lists. Connections are a separate topic and run in types, as opposed to having specific mandatory visual qualities like shape gradations.

So far, in my experience, the top two app-types that work well are 1) vector drawing apps like Inkscape and 2) spreadsheet apps like Calc. The latter because even though "it's a spreadsheet (which is a pretty big deal)," "it's also a drawing app supporting layers, etc."

Living document of reference, very alpha: https://www.friendlyskies.net/intj/the-capture-map-a-new-con...

troydavis
Something like Miro. I’m a user myself and it has good or great implementations of all of these things. Here’s a few examples: https://miro.com/innovation-software/, https://miro.com/mind-map-software/, https://miro.com/workshops/
johnnyliaw121
Yep I absolutely love Miro. It has a lot of neat visual features, but however is aimed more at team collaboration rather than organising note taking for individual use. Regardless I think there's a lot Miro has to offer!