About MindDraw
Theory Garden™ MindDraw™ is the brainchild of Professor Richard J. Boland, Jr. and Dr. Tanvir Y. Goraya, Ph.D.It grows form reserach funded from 1991 to 1994 by the National Science Foundation Porgram on coordination Theory and Collaborative Technology. That award was supplemented by a grant form Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and included development of a software tool named Spider. Publications describing the Spider project are listed below.
The purpose of the Spider software was to enable managers in large, multi function enterprises to overcome the “silos” of thinking within their own specialties, such as marketing, production, engineering, planning, or finance. Spider was tested by managers from the various functional areas of DEC, who each made cause maps of their understanding of what would determine success or failure for new products that DEC was developing.
Managers made drawings from their unique individual perspectives and then exchanged and commented on each others’ different views of the same product. This proved to be a powerful form of communication that strengthened each manager’s abilities to understand their own way of understanding a new product in the marketplace, and also to better understand the ways that others within DEC saw the same product.
The learning experienced by managers at DEC applies to anyone who thinks carefully about a situation of interest to them.Theory Garden is committed to making the visual thinking capabilities of MindDraw available to students and adult learners of all ages.
Spider was developed in a DEC Unix environment, using X-Windows and Motif. Spider software is no longer operational. After ots demise,Tanvir Goraya wrote MindDraw to expand and improve on the ideas behind the Spider drawing tool. In 2005, Boland and Goraya, along with Robert B. Tomaro, built on this momentum and formed Theory Garden™ LLC to create thinking tools with advanced animation, simulation and intelligence capabilities.
Theory Garden is introducing an advanced visual thinking product named Seed. Theory Garden Seed is a remarkable tool that not only draws theory diagrams, but also enables a theorist to see the logical implications of their theory by animating and simulating its behavior under varying assumptions.
Visit the Theory Garden and MindDraw web sites to learn more about these powerful learning tools.
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The main publications on the Spider project and its findings include:
R. J. Boland and R. V. Tenkasi, “Perspective Making and Perspective Taking in Communities of Knowing”, Organization Science, August, 1995, pp. 350-372.
Which was later reprinted in: De Sanctis G. and Fulk, J., (eds.) Shaping Organization Form: Communication, Connection and Community, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks: CA, 1999, pp. 327-367.
and,
R. J. Boland, R. V. Tenkasi and D. Te'eni, "Designing Information Technology to Support
Distributed Cognition", Organization Science, Vol. 5, No. 3, 1994,
pp. 456-475.
Which was later reprinted in : Meindl, J. R., Stubbart, C. and Porac, J., (Eds.) Cognition Within and between Organizations, Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1996, pp. 245-280.
Other publications from the SPIDER project include :
R. J. Boland, Jr. and R. Tenkasi, "Communications and Collaboration in Distributed Cognition", in G.M. Olson, T.W. Malone & J.B. Smith (Eds.), Coordination Theory and Collaboration Technology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001.
D. Te'eni, D. Schwartz and R. Boland, "Cognitive Maps for Communication: Specifying Functionality and Usability," in Carey, J. (Ed.) Human Factors Research in Information Systems Ablex, 1997.
R. V. Tenkasi, and R. J. Boland, "Exploring Knowledge Diversity in Knowledge Intensive Firms," Journal of Organizational Change Management, 1996, pp. 63-78.
Anil Maheshwari and R. J. Boland, "Computer Mediated Representation and the Experience of Self Reflection" Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems , 1995, pp. 189-195.
R. V. Tenkasi, R. J. Boland and R. E. Purser, "Raising Awareness of Interpretive Processes in Knowledge Work: SPIDER, a Computer Based Hyper-Environment for 'Thinking about Thinking'" In D. J. Sumanth, J. A. Edosomwan, D. S. Sink and R. Poupart (Eds.), Productivity and Quality Management Frontiers - IV, Miami, Florida: Institute of Industrial Engineers, February, 1993.
R. J. Boland, D. Schwartz, R. Tenkasi, A. Maheshwari and D. Te'eni "Sharing Perspectives in Distributed Decision Making" Association of Computing Machinery, Conference on Computer Supported Cooprerative Work, Toronto, November, 1992.
D. Te'eni, D. Schwartz and R. Boland, "Cognitive Maps for Communication: Specifying Functionality and Usability," Fourth Symposium on Human Factors in Information Systems, Phoenix, February, 1992.
