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Show HN: Kinopio.club – visual thinking, brainstorming tool

181 points| pketh | 5 years ago |kinopio.club | reply

64 comments

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[+] pketh|5 years ago|reply
Hey HN,

Kinopio is a visual thinking tool that can be used for things like brainstorming, organizing thoughts, mood-boards, planning, basically for figuring stuff out (by yourself or collaboratively).

I've been building it for the last year after leaving my job as the co-creator of Glitch (http://pketh.org/hello-kinopio).

There's no sign up required to use it, let me know what you think,

thx!

– Pirijan

[+] _rkz1|5 years ago|reply
This looks really cool. The spaces I've found so far from the explore tab are delightfully wacky[0] and make me excited for what I can do with this.

Are there limits for how many cards can go on one space (with a subscription)? I couldn't find that in the help docs.

[0] https://kinopio.club/things-on-heads-that-do-not-belong-hpbu...

[+] kanobo|5 years ago|reply
Good job Pirijan! I like the style very much, it feels like an old mac + a nintendo ds game + a 90's website + the future.
[+] santa_boy|5 years ago|reply
Looks good. Just wondering how is this different from a mindmap. Is the multimedia ability the differentiator?

I hacked together a simple textual mindmap with colors, fonts, etc on a canvas that I use for personal thinking. Just wondering how this improves the process.

[+] foxbarrington|5 years ago|reply
Nice work. This answers my question about why this looks so much like Glitch.
[+] igotsideas|5 years ago|reply
Real cool! What tech did you use to build it?
[+] thinkersilver|5 years ago|reply
I've been a big fan of brain storming tools for a long time so appreciate new tools with different takes on the problem.

I do have one observation and it maybe just me. I have no way of clustering a group of connected thoughts, or a way to 'chunk' the concepts. I see some attempt by using coloured lines but there should be a way to make these ideas hierchical and from that be able to zoom up and down various levels of conceptualisation. It would make managing a large network of ideas a lot easier, possibly a bit more ergonomic. Similar to the way the brain works.

It may just be me but was wondering if there's a way to achieve that with the current tooling or if you think there are workarounds?

[+] pketh|5 years ago|reply
I recently added the ability to select some cards and move them to a new space (screencast: https://twitter.com/KinopioClub/status/1296205302988025856)

The idea is that if you've got a bunch of cards you want to 'group' to isolate and expand on seperately, it's pretty convenient to be able to do so in a new space.

Let me know if this addresses grouping for you, thanks :)

[+] desireco42|5 years ago|reply
Same here. I think that should be prioritized as next feature, as it is required to do more serious thinking with this tool. Otherwise I like it.
[+] _rkz1|5 years ago|reply
Could you maybe link to a different space with your cluster of thoughts/cards there? I'm not sure if there's a limit for spaces.
[+] o-o-o|5 years ago|reply
Happy user and recent subscriber here. What differentiates this for me vs. other mind mapping tools is its idiosyncratic and opinionated interface. Yes please to more interfaces that feel like a human has made them.
[+] lukevp|5 years ago|reply
I like the art, not a fan of the text boxes not having white backgrounds when editing but I get the stylistic choices.

Interesting approach to mind mapping, limiting by # of cards seems like it encourages large cards though. Could you do a time based trial instead? Or limit collaboration/public for paid plans?

I was concerned about the performance a large graph would have when I toggled filters on/off on my iPhone and it took about a second for each change to apply (that’s with < 20 cards). If someone really used this they’d end up with thousands.

[+] pketh|5 years ago|reply
to ensure that cards comfortable fit in all screensizes, cards can only have 255 characters, so cards can't get too big (also because that's the default postgres string limit).

I'll look into optimizing filter performance, can you email me ([email protected]) the space you used for this? It usually isn't that slow.

re time trial: there's certainly no perfect trial scenario that works for everyone, so if you hit the limit and you're still evaluating just shoot me an email and i'll adjust your limit.

[+] donut2d|5 years ago|reply
This is really cool. One issue: I accidentally created a checkbox card with no text and there's no way to edit or remove it (Safari). I can tick the checkbox and move it around and connect it to other cards, but I can't bring up the edit window.

Correction: there is a small area just below the checkbox in the card that I can click to bring up the edit window. Was difficult to discover.

[+] pketh|5 years ago|reply
good call, i'll look into fixing this soon
[+] StopHammoTime|5 years ago|reply
I've been using Kinopio for a few things in the last few weeks. It's a great bit of kit, and for me the excitement of the UI keeps me more interested than traditional mind mapping software.

Pirijan is super responsive on support. Glad to be able to support his project financially!

[+] pketh|5 years ago|reply
it's appreciated!
[+] anon1094|5 years ago|reply
Great work on this Pirijan. I use Glitch.com almost daily, but I did not know that you were the co-creator. But, the moment I landed on the site I knew it had something to do with Glitch. I felt that familiar design instantly.
[+] zapzupnz|5 years ago|reply
Is there any chance Nintendo could look rather disapprovingly upon the use of the Japanese name for the Toad characters, Kinopio?
[+] pketh|5 years ago|reply
'kinopio' in japanese is a general word meaning mushroom, and kinopio.com just happens to a bicycle store in japan
[+] zatel|5 years ago|reply
The demo on the site also uses the wii store music or some recognizable version of it.
[+] TrueDuality|5 years ago|reply
It was a lot of fun exploring how you're UI/UX worked. I like the particle effect into a selection tool especially.
[+] ibdf|5 years ago|reply
This is really neat. Found it to be pretty intuitive, and selecting multiple nodes is super useful. I noticed the arrow links on the top of the node open on the same window, which I would have expected to open on a blank window so that I don't lose the current view.
[+] pketh|5 years ago|reply
the links open in the same page because navigating away from kinopio.club doesn't result in any data loss.

Because there are usability issues with new tab/window spawning for less pro computer users, the w3c recommendation is that you should only use target=_blank links when moving to a new page would destroy your page state (e.g. if you were filling out a form).

(Just in case you haven't tried it yet, middle mouse clicks will open the url in a new window/tab)

[+] breakfastduck|5 years ago|reply
Really cool design choices here. I love how simple and responsive it is.

Can see myself using this quite a bit for work.

Are there plans to add more types of cards? Html embed might be quite cool.

It would also be nice to be able to give the connections an angle so they can go around different blocks

[+] pketh|5 years ago|reply
html embed is def possible , but using an actual iframe might lead to some performance impacts. Instead what I eventually plan to build is a url unfurling/screenshot tool that I can use on cards with urls
[+] pk78|5 years ago|reply
Hey! Nice tool! I created a similar mind mapper a while back - it's completely free to use: https://mapsofmind.com

If someone is looking for a similar tool, do take a look! :)

[+] jlbnjmn|5 years ago|reply
Love it! It's great. Works for me. I needed something like this today.

I'm not sure why it's so much better than other mind mapping tools, but it is.

Also, really big fan of the local storage only, no login required feature.

[+] uxamanda|5 years ago|reply
The local storage is great. Looks like the export to JSON and the local storage cache are one and the same meaning importing data should be straightforward as well.
[+] bkyan|5 years ago|reply
Have you considered making your background draggable? (Example: https://beta.mindcast.com/ )
[+] pketh|5 years ago|reply
it's a neat idea, def something I'll think about.

In general my goal is to have the main navigation interactions be as native as possible so there's less to learn. e.g. if you know how to scroll a webpage, you know how to scroll a kinopio space.

[+] zatel|5 years ago|reply
Thank you for making this it's cool and is basically the exact way that I use Keynotes on Mac to organize ideas (only better because of adding videos and other content)
[+] S33V|5 years ago|reply
I might be a dummy, but if I create a card with a checkbox and nothing else I can't seem to edit it. Is this a bug?
[+] bentsai|5 years ago|reply
It might need some tweaking, but the target area for bringing up the edit UI is pretty small in that case. I think you have to click on a small section below the checkbox :P
[+] pketh|5 years ago|reply
i just pushed out an update that adds some safe clickable area in this case
[+] S33V|5 years ago|reply
By the way I love the product :)
[+] whywhywhywhy|5 years ago|reply
Been following this from the start, like where it's heading and hope to see more things like this in the future.