Views and Sorts

Not everyone is comfortable with visual thinking, especially when working quickly. In workshops, lists are a convenient way of manipulating the content of a model. The Agents and Effects tabs in the Explorer panel, provide a list view of all the agents and effects in the model. In a large model, they also help navigate the model. Items in the list views can be Center and Selected on the canvas.

If the Explorer panel is not open, use the View menu (Ctrl+E).

The lists of agents and effects can be viewed and sorted in various ways, depending upon the analysis task at hand. For example, you can sort the agents by 'harming influence'.

Views are provided for all Southbeach attributes, including any tags in the model. For example, if you used decision tags or prioritization tags, Southbeach Modeller would create views for you organized by those tags. From there, you could drag agents around, e.g. to change the prioritization directly from the list, instead of on the canvas.

To gain access to all the views and sorts possible, right click on the heading at the top of the tree, e.g. Usefulness, in order to select a different view or sort. The agent tab provides one set of views and sorts, and the effect tab a similar set.

From the same right mouse menu you can also Reverse Order of the list, turn on Color allowing for useful (green, harmful (red) and action (blue) items to be easily seen.

Within the list or sort view, you can:

• • Double-click on an item to bring up its Properties dialog or

  • Right mouse on the item and select Properties or

  • Drag the item to a different category in the list to change its value. The object on the canvas will be updated.

  • Right mouse - Delete

  • (Right mouse - Rename)

You can also locate an item on the canvas from the list view. Right mouse - Center and Select the item at any time. This is useful when working with large or complex models, in workshops, or when the Zoom factor is high and only part of the model is visible on the canvas (Zoomed in).

Go ahead and experiment with the various views and sorts provided. You won't use all of them all the time, but you will find them useful.

In a workshop, for example, the tags view could be used to quickly tag the model as participants make suggestions. It would be hard to do this in real time if you had to right mouse on each agent on the canvas in order to make the changes. Similarly, an alphabetic sort could be useful at any time in a complex model, allowing you to find an agent by name, center it, and zoom out around that part of the model in order to make changes. The 'Most changed' view allows you to quickly home in on the objects to which you (or a colleague) have made the most changes. This information is kept in the model for all time, and allows you to go back to an old model and could help identify the areas of analysis where you, or a colleague, were spending the most time.

A list of each of the views and sorts is provided below.

Those agent views which reflect 'exclusive' attributes or tags are also active. You can drag an agent from one value to another, and the change will be made on the canvas. For example, in the 'Usefulness' view, you can drag an agent from 'useful' to 'harmful'.

(It is not easy to capture a screen shot of drag operations so please just experiment until you understand how it works.)

Agent views provided:

• • Usefulness

  • Sufficiency

  • Goals and risks

  • Historical

  • Focus

  • Shape

  • Emphasis

  • Presentation order

  • Separations

  • Tags

Sort agents by:

• • Most improved

  • Most harmed

  • Improving influence

  • Harming influence

  • Contradictions

  • Most increased

  • Most decreased

  • Increasing influence

  • Decreasing influence

  • Number of connections

  • Number of inputs

  • Number of outputs

  • Alphabetical

  • Left-Right position

  • Up-Down position

  • Size (of box on the canvas)

  • Most Changed

Effect views provided:

• • Type of effect

  • Usefulness of effect

  • Increasing/Decreasing

  • Sufficiency

  • Questionable

  • Source Agent

  • Destination Agent

  • Properties of (Involved) Agents

Sort effects by:

• • (number of) Effects on effects (effect complexity)

  • Alphabetical

  • Length (of the effect line on the canvas)

Notes:

• 1. Southbeach determines whether an effect is 'harming' by looking at its color. It the effect line is red, the effect is harming the situation.

  2. Ditto for 'improving'.

  3. Increasing effects are 'produces', 'creates', 'contributes to' ...

  4. Decreasing effects are 'counteracts', 'destroys', 'detracts from', 'prevents', 'consumes' ...

  5. (NOT, insufficient, dysfunctional, excessive, emphasis, delayed, accelerated, questionable)