Review - Axon Idea Processor

Like The Creative Thinker Axon uses shapes to represent ideas, but there the resemblance ends. Apart from drawing diagrams, there are all sorts of facilities in Axon. The depth of the program, and the use of dense, overpowering dialog boxes make it non-trivial to get into, but given time and effort it can be rewarding. There’s too much use of the keyboard to modify mouse actions – but at least it’s easy to pop in a box simply by clicking on the screen and typing, while links operate with a single click.

Beyond recording your ideas, with full control of visual format, Axon comes with a number of features to stimulate thought. There are checklists, a mechanism for displaying a list of keywords to kick off a new line of enquiry. Axon comes with a range of checklists, structured by task, and you can add your own. Other features produce general-purpose questions, or produce random sentences or combinations of words to help trigger new ideas. These aren’t exactly rocket science as far as creativity techniques go, but they can do the trick.

Perhaps more impressive are the features to extend a model. Axon supports multiple transparent layers, which cleverly become smaller as you get further back. This allows for an effective 3D representation of concepts. Computation features add calculations to the mix. This makes it practical to build a working model, and can be used for numerical calculation or to provide living logic diagrams and decision trees. There is also basic support for Pert and Gantt charts, though it would be stretching things to consider Axon anything more than a very summary project management tool. Exporting is limited to basic text.

Axon provides an excellent idea modelling structure if you’re the sort of person who likes to get your hands dirty and tinker. See Axon's web site for more information.