How does XMind help along your academic journey? Are you interested in knowing smart study secrets from worldwide students? In the following article, we interviewed some #studygram XMind users on Instagram and listened to their XMind stories. They’ve shared many amazing study-themed mind maps, and their answers perfectly respond to many academic/study-related questions. How to integrate XMind into their study routine? What’s their favorite XMind structure and used for what? Let's hear from two of them today.

Please introduce yourself ;-)

GP: I’m Giulia Pisanti, @giuly_mednotes__ on instagram. I’m an Italian studygrammer and I study medicine in university. I’m 19 years old and I love to give advice to other students.

VI: Hey! my name is Vidushi and I’m a high school student from India. my stream is Humanities (History, Political science, Economics, English) with Psychology. I am 17-year-old and in 12th grade.

When did you start using mind maps? How do you know about XMind?

GP: I started using mind maps almost a year ago, so when I started my journey into medicine. I heard on Instagram from other studygrammers about this app and I was very curious to try it.

VI: I’ve been using mind maps for at least 5-6 years now for making notes, but I didn’t use it much as making mind maps is a quiet time-consuming process, and if you are making those on paper, it only gets worse. But then I saw XMind on @ellenkellystudies’s YouTube channel and thought of giving it a shot, and I instantly fell in love with it! Now, I’ve been using XMind for almost 2 years.

What do you mainly use XMind for?

GP: I usually create mental maps because I find that they are the most suitable to my studies, and I also like the aesthetic very much. Sometimes I also tried the other settings, but the mental maps are my all-time favorites.

VI: I’ve actually used pretty much all the settings available to be honest😅 The basic mind map, logic chart, brace map, org chart and the tree chart are the ones I’ve already used and I absolutely love all of them. I use different "chart styles" based on what type of content I have in front of me so I actually can’t pinpoint one of them to be my favorite.

What’s your favorite feature in XMind? How do you often use it?

GP: Besides the creation of the mental map, my favorite feature is the “smart” one, so the ability to write, add and remove branches and organize the whole map just using the keyboard. I think that this is the feature that gives a lot of power to create quick and effective maps.

VI: My favorite feature would be ’boundary’ and ‘relationship’. There are a lot of mind map apps out there, but this is something most of them lack. For those who make mind maps on their tablet or phones, they can easily draw those boundaries or connect 2 different topics, but for someone who makes notes using a laptop or PC, it’s not really possible to make those. But, since XMind provides this feature, it makes it different from others.

How do you integrate XMind into your study routine?

GP: I use XMind during my first approach with a subject. I first read and highlight the most important info from books and lessons, but I need XMind to organize the information and I always start memorizing while creating the map, plus I understand a lot of superficial things that can be removed, and mostly I am able to understand the connections between the information.

VI: I use XMind to either make notes of subjects which aren’t heavily content based, or for making summaries (of almost all my subjects). I make notes when I’m reading the chapter for the first time, and I make summaries of those chapters when I’m studying for an exam. The mind maps help me in getting a general overview of the topic and makes revision a whole lot faster and easier.

How do you use XMind to study for exams?

GP: The first thing I do is what I described in the previous question. In fact, I also use the maps that I’ve created during my first oral repetition. In this way I’m able to make a first organized speech to help me say everything about a topic and also in a detailed way, plus I can remember the information better since I’ve got a visual memory.

Do you think XMind boosts your productivity? In what ways?

VI: XMind really helps in boosting one’s productivity for various reasons. 1. It is really less time consuming than any of the other app for making mind maps; 2. It’s pretty simple to use and once you get a hang of it, you would not want to switch to any other app; 3. There are certain features in the app that help you get a better overview of the entire topic like, forming boundaries and connecting various topics using arrows, making short summaries, etc, that make studying easier and faster.

How will you recommend XMind to worldwide students?

VI: I would definitely recommend XMind to all the students out there. XMind has a user-friendly interface and is really easy to use. The best part of this app would be that its free version has all the basic features that are required for making good mind maps. This way you can actually give it a shot and then if you like the app you can go for the paid version. Moreover, it’s available on all devices which is like cherry on top. All students should at least give this app a shot because all of us at some point or the other, we all do need to make mind maps.

Can you share some of your study-related mind maps with us?

mind maps by Giulia Pisanti @giuly_mednotes__

Stay tuned for our upcoming interview #2 for more study tips with XMind ☺