Assignment 3: Exercise 3: Spider Diagrams

For this exercise we were asked to create a spider diagram for each of the following words: travel, childhood, angry, underground and community. As part of our diagrams we were invited to look at definitions, synonyms and images. I incorporated definitions and synonyms into my spider diagrams but kept a record of relevant images by screenshot as there didn’t seem to be a satisfactory way to incorporate more than a handful of images into the spider diagrams themselves. For the diagrams I used the SimpleMindPro app. 

Travel

A 

A

For this and subsequent themes I used the Google image search terms firstly of just the word, then of the word plus illustration.

Childhood

Angry

Underground

Community

Reflection

We were asked if anything surprised us. I was surprised that I managed to remain engaged with this process through all five mind maps. It was tedious having to keep repeating the same process. I was, however, re-engaged by each new word. Something that wasn’t really surprising but worth noting is that the diagrams I shared with others drew forth some different words from them as they had different experiences and ideas. There was, however, a lot more overlap.

We were asked which was the hardest to come up with words for. I found ‘angry’ harder than the others. It helped when I started to think about different reasons for being angry. 

Lastly, we were asked which approaches drew forth most new words. For me, it was the thesaurus. I can get lost in there for hours, following synonyms of synonyms. I also found the antonyms helpful in defining what the word is not. More than this, though, by far the majority of words came from just thinking and making connections. 

Overall, these spider diagrams are a good way of generating words and ideas. However, I have so many words and ideas that tmind maps can make it harder to narrow things down. I always have more ideas than time. Nevertheless, a simplified version could be helpful for exploring ideas and themes for an image or body of work.