Concept map maker

Lucidspark is a concept map software that helps you and your team visualize and understand relationships between ideas—no matter how complex. Sign up for a free trial today.

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Collaborate intuitively with your team

Create a concept map to easily visualize your concepts.

Organize your ideas

Bring order to your brainstorming sessions and uncover valuable insights with features like Gather and Sort, Tag, timer, and Breakout Boards.
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Easily import your concept map

Import your boards from Miro and other online concept mapping software into Lucidspark and pick up where you left off. You can also import PDFs, PNGs, and CSVs.
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Collaborative AI

Build a concept map quickly and intuitively. Use Collaborative AI to generate new ideas and build off of existing thoughts.
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Brainstorm and ideate

Bring your best ideas to life with our free concept map creator. Utilize freehand drawing to unlock creativity on an infinite canvas. Import customizable templates for inspiration and add sticky notes to collaborate with your team. Lucidspark’s concept map builder makes brainstorming effortless.
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Share and collaborate instantly

With sticky notes, annotations, and other collaborative tools, you can instantly gather feedback and share insights with your team. Collaborate on a concept map today to align your ideas and concepts.
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Strategic planning

After you’ve created a concept map, it’s time to turn your ideas into action. Vote on your favorite ideas as a team, group common themes, and discuss them in Breakout Boards. You can even turn your Lucidspark board into a presentation to share with others.
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Lucidspark feature highlights

Keep your brainstorming session and your team on track with features like take the lead and timer.

Concept map templates

Get inspired and visualize concept maps faster with free, customizable templates.

Getting started in Lucidspark

Follow along with this video tutorial and learn how to kick-start creativity in Lucidspark.

Why teams choose Lucidspark

As a virtual whiteboarding application, Lucidspark’s infinite canvas enables teams to move seamlessly from ideation to planning and building.

Collaboration. Bring teams together side by side on a shared canvas from anywhere in the world.

Alignment. Build transparency and shared understanding of how a team or company works.

Large-scale change. Increase visibility, standardization, and knowledge sharing across your entire org.

End-to-end workflows. Upgrade to the Lucid Suite for a complete, connected visual collaboration solution.

What is a concept map?

A concept map helps you visualize the relationship between concepts, ideas, events, or notes. These diagrams are commonly used to plan curriculum, create study guides, or outline writing projects. To use a concept map, put your ideas in circles (also called nodes). Unlike a mind map that starts in the center and works outwards, a concept map generally works top to bottom in a hierarchy. Connect your circles with lines or arrows (also called arcs) and label the lines to show how the ideas relate to each other.

How to make a concept map

Begin with the core topic you want to explore. Drag a shape onto the canvas to contain it. The hierarchy of your concept map will start from here.

Make a list of all the key ideas that relate to your core topic. This list is called the parking lot. Order them from most general first to most specific last.

Move your key concepts from the parking lot to the diagram, drawing connecting lines as you go. Label the lines with text to show how the ideas are related.

Personalize and organize your diagram by adding colors and images. As you learn more about your core topic, update your diagram.

Use Lucidchart’s easy sharing options to present your concept map. You can share the diagram directly within Lucidchart, print it, or download it as a PNG, JPEG, or PDF.

Lucidspark additional resources

Lucid Training Labs

Learn visual collaboration skills in free, self-serve courses and live training workshops.

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Lucid Community

Connect with other users to share tips and insights. Provide feedback to Lucid’s product team.

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Help center

Find detailed articles with step-by-step instructions for using specific Lucid features.

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Lucidspark tutorials

Go to the Lucidspark tutorials playlist on YouTube for video training on various topics.

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Collaborate with AI

Get an overview of Lucidspark’s AI functionality and find additional resources.

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Lucid blog

Explore tips for optimizing collaboration, aligning teams, and driving initiatives in Lucidspark.

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Lucidspark pricing

Create a free account and compare options for paid Individual, Team, or Enterprise plans.

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Frequently asked questions about our concept map maker

A concept map is a diagram or graphical tool that visually represents relationships between concepts and ideas. Most concept maps depict ideas as boxes or circles (also called nodes), which are structured hierarchically and connected with lines or arrows (also called arcs). These lines are labeled with linking words and phrases to help explain the connections between concepts.

Use a template to easily get started, or take the following steps:

  1. Select a main topic.
  2. Identify key concepts.
  3. Organize each concept using shapes and lines.
  4. Examine your map for accuracy.

Mind maps and concept maps are similar in their objectives but their construction and use cases vary.

Concept maps are a bit more varied in how they depict relationships, while mind maps are typically limited to radial hierarchies and tree structures. Concept maps depict cross-linking between multiple relationships. Mind maps focus on a straightforward flow of ideas from one main topic, or a single parent/several children construction. Concept maps are typically applied in more formal business and academic settings, whereas mind maps are more spontaneous and flexible in their application. Concept maps explore ideas and concepts that have been introduced externally, such as theories or existing systems. Mind maps usually flesh out topics that have been generated internally.

Lucidspark makes it easy for teachers and students alike. Students can collaborate in real time on assignments while teachers can create engaging presentations with Presentation Mode to share with the class. We offer many templates to help you turn your board into a slide deck in just a few clicks.

Lucidspark offers hundreds of templates to help you plan projects, run meetings, and brainstorm ideas.

Lucidspark offers a variety of pricing plans to meet individual and team needs. We offer individual free accounts all the way up to enterprise accounts for large organizations.

Everything you need to make a concept map online

In addition to our concept map maker, Lucidspark offers support and training resources to help you ideate, plan, and build with your team.

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