ContextMinds: 1 single tool to help you with everything from mind mapping to generating an entire article.

About ContextMinds

Founded in the year 2018 by two Prague-based research scholars, ContextMinds is a mind-mapping tool, power-packed with features that amp up your thinking and understanding game. It is a powerful visual tool designed to help users organize and enhance their thinking processes, primarily through concept mapping and mind mapping. It allows users to create visual schemas of ideas, problems, or topics, revealing how different concepts are related.

As you develop your map, ContextMinds suggests related concepts using AI, making the process more intuitive and helping you see connections you might have missed. It makes your mind work for you, and you will realize that your mind already knows what to do next, you just need a map to navigate the same.

Beyond being a handy tool for mapping, ContextMinds also acts as a research and content development tool. Writers and content creators can use it to collect ideas, outline projects, and gather research in a visual format. AI-powered suggestions are also enabled in ContextMinds, helping users generate unique angles and overcome creative mind blocks. Additionally, it supports SEO and keyword analysis by providing search volume data and frequently asked questions, which can be dragged into maps to enrich the entire writing process. That’s the ease of using ContextMinds, whose flow and designs we got to create.

And, at Momentum91, we are fortunate to have been given the opportunity to create such an amazing concept that eases your mind in creating beautiful things. With Contextminds, you can rise above mind blockages, and break complex ideas into structured simple concepts. 

The story behind ContextMinds

Marek Dudáš and Václav Zeman founded ContextMinds, back in 2018, while doing their PhD. The motivation behind starting ContextMinds stemmed from their deep academic and professional experience in knowledge visualization and extraction.

During their thesis, the founders recognized that traditional tools, like SEO or topic generators, often focused too much on keywords or trending topics and failed to help users develop truly creative and distinctive ideas. This gap motivated them to build a tool that could assist users in visualizing relationships between ideas, exploring new concepts, and intuitively organizing them.

They thought of a solution that would act as a visual ‘second brain,’ remembering and suggesting ideas from past projects and other knowledge bases to enhance the brainstorming and research experience . Thus, this is how ContextMinds was born, a handy tool to make the mind work for you, and make one realize your mind already knows what to do next, you just need clarity for the same.

About the Founder

ContextMinds is founded by Marek Dudas and Václav Zeman. Marek serves as the CEO of ContextMinds and Václav serves as CTO of ContextMinds. Both PhD holders, specializing in data visualization and data extraction respectively.

Marek Dudas  

Marek Dudas is the CEO & co-founder of ContextMinds. He is a PhD holder, having done his PhD from the University of Economics in Prague, specializing in ‘Knowledge Engineering’, and his main focus on knowledge visualization. He was convinced that mind mapping could be a great resource to understand complex concepts simply. Thus, he originated the idea of ContextMinds, where he brings his past research into a software solution.

Apart from being the CEO of ContextMinds, he is also a teaching assistant at the University of Economics, Prague, expanding his data science skills and knowledge. He is inclined to help intellectuals ranging from writers to students, use the powerful technique of data visualization and bring fast learning & understanding to any subject.  

Václav Zeman

Václav also belongs to Prague, Czech Republic. He is also a PhD holder, having done his PhD in ‘Telecommunications Technology’ from Brno University of Technology. He specializes in knowledge extraction and telecommunications, and alongside Marek Dudaš, he has applied his academic expertise to develop ContextMinds. He is the CTO at ContextMinds, and also an associate professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication at the same institution.  

‍ContextMinds' journey with us

ContextMinds as a project is one of the longest-running projects for us. Having worked on it closely, with all the iterations we made to better the product, it is closer to our hearts like no other. When the founders reached out to us, they already had a product in hand and were looking for a SaaS agency to refine the design of the product with a compelling user experience. The earlier product’s user flow was poorly structured, with unclear navigation, and a chaotic layout.

Our experts started to work on it and revamped the entire product. With an immersive UI, the user flow is now simple & intuitive from start to end.

Website

We are proud to mention that we completed the entire ContextMinds website in 2 weeks straight from writing to designing to development. Having created over 80+ pages, it is a full-proof combination of intuitive design and top-notch website development.  

UI/UX designing

The prior version had a cluttered layout due to a complex flow, which made it challenging from the stage of mind mapping to sharing files. Thus, a better UI was needed for a user-friendly, immersive experience.

First of all, we changed the color palette, as the previously used color palette was not readable enough, and the reviews also suggested that it be changed. The color green in the fonts which was used earlier was not visible enough, and thus there were accessibility issues. Our talented designers' team, used a dark pastel green shade with the code - #08bd48 to refine the entire look and offer better visibility.

Secondly, we proposed various iterations in the user flow that could simplify the entire process. Our designers studied the editor flow in software such as this, and based on our research, we created a simple yet intuitive layout, which spanned from left to right.

In the earlier designs, there was less room for a mind map, and over 70% of the screens were covered to show the bottom and the right panel, leaving less room for an actual mind map.

Thus, instead of having a bottom editor flow, we proposed an editor flow from left to right, where the left panel would have all kinds of suggestions, and the right panel would have the results, leaving more space for the mind-mapping part. Moreover, we also added various other feature designs.

The result was a mind-mapping platform with a well-defined user flow and an engaging UI with better features that amped up the entire concept. Our talented group of designers considered their requirements and optimized the product for an amazing user experience.

Techstack we used for ContextMinds

Designing tools

• Figma

Website development

• Webflow

Features that make ContextMinds unique

Infinite canvas user interface to mindmap like a pro

If you see a physical board, it is small and limited, but ContextMinds whiteboard is infinite, with much bigger space. You can fit in all your ideas, and interlink many ideas together, without having to worry about rubbing it or limited whiteboard space. You can scroll in and out, and look at so many interlinked ideas, and with such a huge whiteboard at your service, you get lots of room to work. Label the content, label the arrows, and add multiple bricks one after the other, and mindmap like a pro.  

What’s more, is - that ContextMinds allows mind-mapping both horizontally and vertically. Thus, if you think your ideas are more free-flowing, then you can mind map, left to right. Whereas, if you think you want to do it more sequentially and step-wise, then on the huge canvas board, you can do it, vertically, from top to bottom. With ContextMinds' outstanding features, get clarity in your thoughts like none other.  

Get suggestions on everything  

Once you turn the suggestions features on, you get suggestions related to everything from keywords to articles, headings to related metrics, and other maps that have been created in the past by others. Moreover, you can even add various filters to it, and do a more focused SEO search. Over and above that, you can also include that suggestion as a separate brick itself with a single tap on the ‘plus’ sign.  

The suggestion feature makes it a perfect tool for writers and makes it easier for them to do their research in one single tab, rather than switching different websites and opening 10+ tabs. With ContextMinds, you get a multitude of things to support your article or thesis and do in-depth research on the topic.  

Conversational AI Integration  

One of the features that makes ContextMinds outweigh other similar tools is gen-AI-powered integration. Users can directly chat-GPT things without having to open another tab and do it. For example, if a writer wants to find the synonym of a particular word, thus he doesn’t have to open other tabs, but rather just directly GPT from there, and get multiple synonyms on the go. Moreover, articles can also be generated through AI and can be added to the bricks.    

Add notes in the background

Mind mapping is freeing thoughts, getting more clarity & making them more structured. ContextMinds helps one with the same by providing the feature to add notes as well as the context or reference behind the brick topic. Once you have added the concept notes, you can click on the brick, and it will show up on the left panel. Moreover, you can also link your external files for your future reference, assisting you in nesting other ideas and materials along with the main idea or concept.  

Export your map data to PDFs, docs, or images

Have your mind map handy for your future use, by exporting it to PDFs, images, or docs to work more on it, making it simple and easy for writers and intellectuals to follow up with their ideas. You can also share your mindmap doc with your colleagues, and allow them to collaborate with you on the topic, and add their suggestions.  

Dark mode

Dark UIs can make the content and data elements stand out more prominently, which can benefit while carrying out mind mapping. We designed it in both light and dark modes so that users can easily switch between themes according to their preferences, enhancing their focus and productivity.

Some of the challenges we faced

The idea was not validated according to the market

The original idea was just limited to a mind map, but the target audience was content writers. However, content writers and creators don't usually mind maps, and thus there was no connection between the product and its targeted audience.  

And, the actual end-users who came on the ContextMinds website and signed up for it, were students, who wanted to mind map for their college projects. To ensure that the product was fit for the market and could specifically be used by content writers, we consequently added more SEO features and made the product a one-of-a-kind SEO-focused tool, not limiting it to just another mind-mapping tool.  

Information clutter

There were too many things to be added, resulting in a cluttered User Interface. There were concepts, notes, suggestions, gen AI suggestions, and categories, which earlier took up the bottom panel and the right pane, leaving very little room for mind-mapping. We addressed the challenge, by adopting an intuitive flow with only one left-side panel for all the suggestions, and the rest of the space for mind-mapping. Moreover, we also complemented it by incorporating the drag-and-drop functionality, which simplified things to a great extent and kept the user interface friendly & intuitive.  

Defining the editor flow was a pretty difficult task

The editor flow in the earlier version was chaotic, with the suggestions panel on the bottom of the desktop screen, and the right panel showing the key metrics of the related topic. To simplify the editor flow for the users, our designers conducted detailed research on how editor functionality works and how the interface can be reduced in complexity. The new version of ContextMinds, from the ground-up, is designed for user-friendly simplicity.

Achievements to ContextMinds' name but surely through Momentum91😍

• One app to do it all - search, outline, keyword research, generate AI articles, and also create mind maps.

• Accoladed with the ‘Trustpilot - Excellent’ badge.  

• Received ‘High Performer Fall 2023’ badge on G2.    

• The app is also featured on App Sumo.  

• Saves 80% of time spent on research & ideation.  

• Rated 4.9/5 on FiveTaco.