The publishing platform for interactive knowledge maps
Everything that matters.
On one map.
Business-critical knowledge, made clear. Each KontextMap shows every aspect of a topic at a glance, and how they all connect. Behind each aspect lies the in-depth content. That way, employees, customers, citizens and specialists grasp things faster, and AI assistants answer in context instead of guessing.
Helps humans understand.
Keeps AI from guessing.
The Problem
Too much informtion.
Not enough context.
Valuable knowledge is lost or goes to waste: when experienced employees leave, when no one can make sense of the filing system, when documents remain unread. Individual pieces of information only make sense when viewed in context. And that’s exactly what’s usually missing.
Every organization has issues where the wrong answer can be costly: a made-up rule, an incorrect dosage, an outdated procedure. When it comes to these issues, everyone involved must understand what’s at stake. And if an AI is part of the decision-making process, it must not guess.
Context matters. Not information.
The Solution
Overview. Context. Detail.
For knowledge that must land.
A KontextMap is a digital publication, for people and, optionally, for AI. Its visual structure shows at a glance which aspects matter and how they are related.
Behind every aspect lies the content—from the initial overview down to the finest details. A map contains everything that’s important about a topic and can be explored layer by layer.
Why Visual Communication Works
A map beats a sea of text.
Easier to Understand
If the structure is visible, working memory does not have to piece it together on its own. This leaves more capacity for the content.
Cognitive Load Theory · Sweller et al., 2019
New information first passes through working memory, which can hold only a small amount of information for a short time. Only then is it stored permanently. Good design prevents this bottleneck from creating unnecessary work.
Review Article on 20 Years of Research, *Educational Psychology Review*
Better
memory
Information received as both images and text is processed through two channels. What you learn this way sticks better.
Multimedia Principle · Mayer, 2021
People learn better from words and images than from words alone. The reason: language and images are processed through separate channels and linked together in memory.
Multimedia Learning, 3. Auflage, Cambridge University Press
Get your bearings faster
A map brings together everything that belongs together. The map shows the way, so you don’t have to search through text.
Locational Indexing · Larkin & Simon, 1987
Text is linear, while a diagram is organized by location within the space. Related elements are placed next to one another. This shortens the search and reveals connections that must first be deduced from the text.
Why a Diagram is (Sometimes) Worth Ten Thousand Words, Cognitive Science
Classify
correctly
Advance Organizer · Ausubel, 1960
New material is learned and retained more effectively when a broader conceptual framework has been introduced beforehand. New knowledge needs a place to connect with.
Journal of Educational Psychology
Schroeder et al., 2018 · Ponce, Mayer & Méndez, 2025
KontextMaps & KI
Built with AI.
Readable by AI.
Structure in.
With KAIA, your co-author.
The structure and design of a map are created in the Map Builder. If you’d like, KAIA (Context AI Assistant) can help you with this. KAIA guides you through the setup process by asking questions, following the workflow we’ve developed over more than ten years of map publishing. KAIA makes suggestions, and you review and decide at every step: “human in the loop,” right from the start. This is how a map’s structure is created in just a few steps.
Hallucination out.
Using your map as the source.
Through our MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, AI assistants read your map directly—including its entire structure, rather than just individual text snippets. The curated map thus becomes a verified, auditable source: Every answer references the appropriate section in the map. No need for a separate RAG project or a parallel knowledge base. This way, your AI doesn’t have to guess when it comes to the topics that matter.
What a map changes
Search less. Understand more.
Time saved
Fewer follow-up questions
Greater Transparency
Better decisions
Expertise that is understood
Fewer silos
¹ Survey of 12,000 knowledge workers and 200 executives · Atlassian, State of Teams 2025
² Meta-analysis, 104 studies · Hülsheger, Anderson & Salgado, 2009
Fields of Application
In the field, where knowledge needs to make an impact.
Compliance &
Law
Onboarding & Offboarding
Training & Further Education
Strategy & Change
Knowledge Preservation & Knowledge Platforms
Product Information & Manuals
Studies & Reports
Magazines & Dossiers
Public Information & Participation
One platform, two ways: publicly via a link or internally via SSO
Features
Built in Map Builder.
Explore in Map Viewer.
KontextMaps has two parts: In the Map Builder, you can create maps without any programming knowledge.
In the Map Viewer, your audience can explore them on any device.
Map Builder
- No-code, visual workspace, work alone or in a team
- Templates and Themes for Maps and Objects
- Your Corporate Identity
- Multilingual, with DeepL translation
- Optional with KAIA
Map Viewer
- In the browser, on any device
- Via a link, iFrame, or your own domain
- Table of Contents, Search, Deep Links
- Glossary and Sources
- Accessible according to WCAG, screen reader-compatible
GDPR-compliant · Servers in Germany · SSO · Integrations: LMS365, SharePoint, Confluence, Notion
Customer Testimonials
The future of knowledge transfer is digital, interactive and takes into account the individual needs and interests of the addressees in terms of breadth and depth. With KontextMaps, we have found a globally unique solution thanks to which we can address some of the most challenging problems of contemporary communication and issue-specific empowerment. And with Kontextlab, we have an innovative and reliable partner who listens to us and allows our needs and wishes to flow into further development. We and our customers are thrilled!
Exceptional! We use KontextMaps to ensure that our clients understand the crucial contexts. The knowledge maps show the overview AND go into depth. This combination creates real added value - for the users of the maps when discovering, our customers, who can grasp a lot of information faster and better, as well as for us, as we can map and communicate the structure of the topics directly!
KontextMaps allows us to guide our users digitally and interactively through the complexities of the financial world of our university. Our users receive orientation at a glance and from their individual perspective.
We live in complex times and we have to identify the context we are working in. One of the best way to see how challenges are interconnected is to visualise them. Therefore, we worked with the team of Kontextlab on an extensive mapping of the 5G Technology: from the political and regulatory context to the likely effects on business, health concerns and cybersecurity, from broad overview to details, interviews with experts and explanatory graphics. We were impressed and inspired by the professionalism and creativity of the Kontextlab’s team and their amazing way to present the complexity of a topic.
With our Media Map, we want to present the entire diversity of the Bavarian media landscape clearly and at a glance. In order to provide a structured overview of actors, institutions, events, funding, training institutions and facts & figures, we decided to use the Kontextlab software. With the help of the knowledge map, we can systematically relate individual areas to each other in a simple and innovative way that makes the reader want to discover the diversity of the Bavarian media landscape and delve deeper into the topic.
Working with the founders of "Der Kontext" and "Kontextlab" is a pure pleasure. Smart people who, together with their colleagues, develop smart solutions to keep track of an abundance of knowledge and dive into the depths at any time to acquire detailed knowledge - and zoom out again for an overview: this is an offer in which the electronic medium can play to its full strengths. This also applies to our content on training in all health professions.
I see enormous potential in these interactive theme cards for the entire education sector! We are pleased to have found an ideal partner in "Kontextlab GmbH" to offer innovative knowledge acquisition based on individual learning requirements for school-relevant topics. The Education Group as an expert for innovative-creative solutions at the interface of pedagogy, technology and media will thus further enrich the educational landscape in Austria!
The opportunities for parent representatives to participate in Bavarian schools are manifold. The parent councils have contact with different groups of people in their work and can contribute to a wide range of topics. The presentation of these networked and branched fields of activity succeeds in an ingeniously simple way on the website www.elternmitwirkung.bayern via the topic maps of KontextLab. The entry into the topic by the user of the map is possible intuitively. The design and administration are easy to implement for the provider.
Our aim was to present complex thematic worlds of our agricultural organisation in their diversity and characteristics in a way that is in keeping with the spirit of the times and entertaining. Large contexts are easiest to explain, understand and ultimately grasp in small steps. For this reason, we have chosen "Kontextlab".
I was delighted to get a presentation of the online platform for Mapping of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) interactive visualizations that Julia, Erich and Bernhard developed for the Perception Change Project (PCP).
For the first edition of Q Berlin Questions, a conference initiated by the city of Berlin, we collaborated with Kontextlab and built a map for the announcement and documentation of the event. In this way, we were able to visualise and constantly expand the complexity and ramification of our topics on the website. Julia and Bernhard were fun to work with and we were delighted to have them on board for our first Q.
Founders of KontextMaps: from left to right: Erich Seifert, CTO; Julia Scholz-Köberlein, CEO; Bernhard Scholz-Köberlein, COO
Making complex topics understandable has always been what drives me. Simplification has never been the answer, because it often leaves out exactly what matters most. The key is context: a broad topic only becomes comprehensible when viewed in context. This applies to people, and it applies to AI. KontextMaps is our answer to this challenge, developed through an interdisciplinary approach. It’s a format that combines overview, orientation, and depth. Its visual structure serves as both a table of contents and a tool: it helps you grasp complexity more quickly and find your way around. And because we designed KontextMaps from the start to be backed by a relational database, the same context becomes readable by AI as well.
