📣 Updated mind map experience in Lucidchart!

Can you make the old (unintelligent) mind map shapes available again? I can’t find old mind map shapes on blank document. 

I ended up have to make a copy of the old mind map file before I can use the old mind map shape.  You don’t have to take away the old mind map shapes. 

Hi Michael! While we recommend taking advantage of the new and improved mind maps experience, we value your feedback and appreciate you reaching out to us. Would you mind posting in the Product feedback section of the Community to share your thoughts?

As you mentioned, the old mind map experience is still available in documents it was previously used on. To facilitate your experience in accessing the old mind map shape library when creating new documents, I would recommend creating a custom template from a document on which you still have it enabled. For instructions and more information, please check out our Template article from the Lucid help center. I hope this helps!

@Shanna H, for those of us who don’t have any existing docs using the old mind map shape library to make copies of, can you kindly make one available we can copy?

@Jeff Madison, thanks for reaching out in the community! I’m a PM here at Lucidchart and would love to hear more about the gap you’re feeling between the old and new mind map experiences — what is it that you miss from old mind maps? We’d love to get our new shape up to your use case.

For now, you can access old mind maps via the following process:

1. Go to your docs list: https://lucid.app/documents#/documents?folder_id=recent
2. Click on the +New button in the upper left, and hover over Lucidchart to select “from template”
3. Search for a template called “simple mind map,” and create your document with that template. 

Awesome, that works. Thanks, @Chloe. Let me play around with both for a bit and report back. (reminder set :-)

I felt so strongly about the gaps between old vs. new mindmaps that I sought out this forum to see if I was the only one who was sad about losing some key tools. I’d be happy to connect and share example use cases if it helps the product team! It’s very powerful where the new mind maps are going, but the loss of diagramming autonomy has me seeking out my old diagrams to hang onto the ability to use the old mind maps

Key benefits of the old mind map I miss (🤕)

• Ability to edit the shapes (size, color, the shape itself) to organize data into a visual maps. Easier to zoom way out and visually see at a glance where certain ideas/discussions exist on the mind map.
• Ability to manually reposition where each node on the mind map resided
• Ability to have a node be an image

Key detractors of the new mind map (aside from what’s mentioned above) (😡):

• It’s very text base and so the visual power of “map” itself is lost. It’s akin to trying to scan a book vs. scanning key points of interest on a map.

Key positives of the new mind map (🍻)

• The ability to SUMMARIZE the mind map data - WOW! YES!!
• The ability to leverage AI to generate question/insight branches for consideration

Hi @CR0G3RS, 

Thank you for the feedback on our MInd Map feature. I would recommend posting any additional thoughts or improvements you would like to see in our Product Feedback section. We are continuously looking for ways to improve our products and your input is the most effective way to achieve that goal. These ideas will be shared with our Product Development team for consideration.

I have to agree with the previous comments. It seems that mind mapping in Lucid is severely under featured and under developed compared to other mapping products. We are stuck with lines and text, and that is about it. A lot of the power of fully fledged mind map software has been stripped away. Sure, we can make a chart or diagram of anything, but it will take forever compared to purpose built mapping software

-There’s no ability to put nodes in a shape or frame and then style it
-There’s only two structures available to use
-Limited number of shapes(basically none)
-A node that is a hyperlkink is almost indistinguishable from nodes without

Here is an example from xmind showing the structures I can use starting at any node and with all the shortcuts to branch out at any point.

Hi @icov, 

Thank you for the additional feedback. We appreciate hearing about your experience and how we can improve our products! 

If you would like to see changes to the Mind Map feature, I would recommend posting these comments as an idea in our Product Feedback Section. These ideas will be shared with our Product Development team for consideration. Before sharing your idea, please explore our community to find existing suggestions. Upvote or comment to voice your support, as all feedback is channeled through our community.

For details on how feedback submissions are collected and considered, check out this Community post

Just adding my support to the very reasonable (and yet not well responded to) comments from users who appreciated the “old” mind map functionality.

“On searching for help in using the “old” mind maps, on which I have wasted time that I will never get back, I read a couple of exceptionally self congratulatory bits of puff from Lucid Chart folks [above] who seem very annoyed that some of us would not like to use the incredibly constraining sole source for mind-maps.  This tool does exactly the opposite of what a mind map is mean to do which is support creative exploration.  So while I am sure we are all very excited about the “new” mapping tool, may we please have easy access to the “old” tools (like via the freaking shapes menu)? OMG. Ux people! And don’t whitter on about “tell me about the use case that requires the old map shapes”? Really, a more jargon filled bit of arrogance I never saw. That’s clearly how Lucid chart now rolls, make the user justify their need. We pay you!” 

Also posted to product feed back. 

Again, the Lucid Chart response seems to be to deflect, ask for more effort from the user, or patronize.  What about just listening?