Graphic Designer Naomi Yasuda introduces “ThinkMap”, a new visual and spatial method of organizing and working with today’s massive ocean of data. Modeled after our own natural mental processes and responses, “ThinkMap” offers us a whole new approach to information management and sharing.
Naomi Yasuda
Graphic designer
Today there is a tremendous amount of information being shared. Whether it be between individuals, schools, companies or countries, information exchange is an ocean in which we are all swimming. But are we able to see the beauty inside this information? Organizing this vast, growing amount of information has long been a challenge. People have approached information organization from many viewpoints, from psychological to social, individual to collective, linear to spatial. So far not one truly successful method has been discovered and used universally.
However consensus (and a clear path) may be just around the corner. Netherlands-born graphic designer Naomi Yasuda works in a Kyoto based interface design company. There, they have been exploring using our own spatial knowledge as a framework for organizing information of all kinds. Called “Think Map”(from the original Japanese terms for “think” and “map”), this framework, based on how humans experience and relate to our world, has been refined in order enable information to be shared across countries, cultures and languages. “Think Map” proposes the possibility of sharing and adapting information — a playground for the mind where we can freely communicate in data as a visual, multi-faceted “map”. Engaging and extremely versatile, “Think Map” may be a glimpse into the near future, when we will be able to organize and manage vast amounts of information and universally share our new visions and discoveries.
