Concept Map

I chose to do my concept map on the gaming industry, as gaming is a big interest of mine. I started with the playstation controller in the middle because that is the system that I own, then from there I branched out and put each of the main consoles of this generation down from Nintendo to Microsoft's Xbox to Sony's Playstation. Once I had each of the consoles down I my mind jumped to the hundreds of games that were out for each respective system. I decided to put down a major title from each of the systems. After I had a game down for each system I realized that I'd totally forgotten handheld consoles. What really reminded me of the handhelds was listing the God of War titles and I remembered Chains of Olympus that was for the PSP (Playstation Portable). Once I had Chains of Olympus down I couldn't leave out the Nintendo handhelds which really started handheld gaming in the industry with the first Gameboy. After I put down the latest consoles for each system I realized that since Nintendo's latest system had motion control capabilities that I should represent the motion control capabilities of the other systems even though Microsoft's Kinect won't come out until November. I connected all the systems with motion gaming capabilities with a pink line because I thought it would stand out to further accentuate the connection.

Mind Maps

I chose to do my mind maps on the process/problem of quitting smoking and all that it entails to me. I had just decided to stop smoking for a variety of reasons that are illustrated in my maps. I started with the ashtray focus in my first map, but admittedly had trouble getting my thoughts down in illustrations and keywords. After I took some time away from my first rough map I found it alot easier to use the first map as a jumping off point. Having a few ideas down in the first map really helped me see where my mind was trying to go with the final product. I was able to break off my thoughts into basically three different branches. The first branch being what was keeping me smoking i.e. the different stressors in my life. The second being why I was quitting i.e. the health risks and negatives to smoking. The third branch was all about how to deal with the temptation I would and have faced. Being that my drawing skills are sub par at best I decided to nix the ashtray approach from my first map, and after I had the cigarette around the focus in the second map I knew I had my color scheme down for how I was going to make the keywords pop, and once I had the colors of the words down ideas for images to accompany the keywords just kind of kept popping into my head and luckily for me the illustrations I thought of weren't too hard to draw.