SMART Ideas is the perfect tool for creating mind maps and other forms of graphic organizers. If you've used it, you've undoubtedly loved it.

Recently, I saw another use for it that makes so much sense.

Often, we create documentation for various things and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. How long have you fiddled with your favourite graphic editor and then draw some lines and approximated some arrowheads to point and then try to include the documentation within some boxes. It can be a frustrating ordeal.

No longer. Use SMART Ideas instead!

Suppose that we wished to create instructions for others about how to use the login window in FirstClass. Normally, you'd be messing around with arrows and text boxes and the lot and you'd still have a static image.

Look what SMART Ideas can bring to the process.

1) We need to have a picture of the login window. So, display the window on your screen and capture the image as you would normally. ALT-PRTSCRN or CMD-OPT-3.

Open SMART Ideas and paste the image into the document. Now, suppose that you wanted to point to the Password field and give instructions. We're going to use SMART Ideas to do this task. Draw a box for the instructions out onto the screen. Into that box, include the instruction that you wish to give. Now, drag a second box onto the screen. In that box, just enter a period as a place holder. Connect the two boxes with an arrow and just draw things to put them into place! What could be easier?

Now, the key to invisibility is to make sure that your character and symbol colour match what is underneath your symbols. (Note that "No Colour" is one option!) The best thing is that you're not locked into a particular layout. With SMART Ideas, you're always able to pick things up and move them around on the screen to get just the look you desire.

The next step is to realize that, with SMART Ideas, you also have levels. So, if any of your instructions require further detail, click on the + sign and drill down to a new sheet where you can have as simple or as explicit instructions as is necessary to do the job.

After you've done a couple of documents in this manner, you'll never go back to any other way to create visual documentation again.