I wonder how thoughtstreams relates to these fundamental thought processes I stumbled upon this month.
some software companies prefer to test job candidates on the white board instead in front of computers. I think the big advantage is here, that it helps interviewers to better understand the candidate's thought processes and how it relates to the team's thoughts.
there are also visual tools for diagrammatic thinking called thinking maps (based on the works of albert upton and richard samson), that can help with this process.
in thinking maps these processes are basically defining context, describing things, sequencing events, identifying relationships, classifiying, comparing and contrasting as well as analyzing causes and effects and illustrating analogies.