I have an idea for a plugin that would really help my workflow when doing sensemaking of information.
The idea
A WYSIWYG map editor or digital whiteboard where you can create and connect cards with annotations to create non-linear concept maps. It is functionally similar to digital whiteboarding tools like Miro, but allows your cards to reference notes in your vault.
Isn’t this just graph view?
No, Graph view visualises the connections between your notes, rather than letting you explore and generate visual connections manually. It also doesn’t require that the cards are links in your vault, where as the nodes in graph view does.
Isn’t it just a mind map?
No, Mindmaps are linear and hierarchical. Concept maps are more organic, allow you to create cards and then connect them.
Key features
- Create ‘cards’ or ‘post-its’ on a board and write in them (similar to cards in kanban)
- Add links to cards using wikilinks
- Connect cards and annotate connection
Here is a screencap of how it works I’m Miro
Nice to have features
- Style cards, links and labels
- Auto style types of cards using tags or YAML
- Drag cards into each other to group
- Export as image or PDF
Would replace
But, would allow you to link the cards to other notes in your vault using the [[wiki link]] syntax
Similar to plugins, that don’t quite answer this need
- Juggl
- Breadcrumbs
- Kanban
- Mindmap
My current workflow
Make the map in Miro, and embed it in the relevant note.
This could be improved by having it in Obsidian as I could add wikilinks directly, and save time copying and pasting back and for the between tools.
Key challenges
Unlike hierarchical or structured visualisations like kanban and mind maps, it is unclear how the map information would be stored as markdown. There may need to be some additional code to store the positions and styles of the map.
Plectica allows you to export maps as markdown, using position to determine order. (top left first), but it is unclear how you would store this the other way.
Why don’t you just do it yourself?
I’m a strategist, researcher and designer. I have no real coding experience so would need someone to build it, but I can do visual design if that is helpful.