Influence mapping.....

[betterfromabove]

Hi,

I'd be really interested to know what the state-of-the-art is seen to be in terms of influence mapping? And is this the same as what everyone finds the most useful as far as communication goes?

What I'm thinking about here is two forms of representation:
1. Description of the present state, illustrating the factors and their relative size that have shaped it over wide time-ranges (years down to hours)
2. The future trajectory from now, showing - again - the factors at play and their relative size and possible outcomes (vulnerabilities / rewards)

Are there clever diagrams out there which could show this on a 1-page summary for ease of discussion?

Or, what about a more visually sumptuous display, using PPT, Prezi or SharpCloud, say?

Hope request make sense and would be delighted to hear your thoughts!

[safetypee]

Hmm, not encountered the term before, but as a reference:- https://www.odi.org/publications/5697-context-assessment-influence-mapping

In terms of safety management the ‘tool’ may help identify those ‘stakeholders’ who could influence certain aspects; e.g. management, or sharp end activity. This assumes that you understand the problem to be solved, and that there is a viable solution.
One danger is that having mapped the scene, it is then taken as ‘gospel’ and not reviewed thereafter.
Tools - “all models are wrong, but some are useful”
Also, when ‘joining up the dots’, first you have to understand what constitutes a dot, what is important and why, and how this might change.

From a communication aspect, the representations are essentially aspects of situation awareness.
Perception of now, relate to history (experience), and project the future outcome. Designing safety.
Visual depiction is a powerful tool, both as a help and a hindrance.

IMHO, avoid new tools until you understand how they work and fully appreciate their limits. Stick with the old and well tried ‘hand tools’ for safety management and/or presentations.

By all means change the way of thinking about these aspects. Something I found recently - http://synecticsworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Imagine-That-Synectics-as-a-Creative-Problem-Solving-System.pdf. ignore the fancy titles and terms, consider the underlying behaviours and thinking processes.

[betterfromabove]

Safetypee - many thanks for your thoughts and the links.

Yes - absolutely agree that any mapping of course runs the risk that it then becomes some kind of static reference that doesn't remain open to revisions and reflection.

The other curse is the homogeneity of the display - i.e. no sense of relative importance of various factors through time.

Your 2nd link of course bears out the question as well of whether you try and depict the state of play principally through a display (which will tend to spawn versions of itself and may/not reach where it needs to) or painting the picture though face-to-face people interaction. No doubt, best solution is some interplay of the two, as should feed off each other and give two bites at the same cherry.

Thrust behind my enquiry is that in technically complex environments, we know there is this lurking force-field of influences going on underneath, but how clear is it to the participants, especially as regards the human factors. How can we best depict it to help the protagonists? I'm thinking almost a mental HUD that's available on tap to them?

[safetypee]

bfa, you are looking for an impossible ideal; how to identify all of the (context relevant) influences on human behaviour. Because our world is complex with interactions beyond comprehension, we have to manage unforeseeable situations, influences, and consequences.

We train individuals to ‘think’, to adapt their behaviour to situations - situation awareness, to consider a range of options - knowledge base, and select a safe course of action - experience. But this training is within a highly complex system, thus an outcome of training or behaviour can never be assured, they are only a probability.
Each area of the thinking process can be enhanced; clarity of situation, range of options, and optimum choice, but all are still subject to human variability in the choice of what to pay attention too. Enhancement with automation (displays) introduces other limitations and problems, which ultimately the human has to resolve. See discussions on automated decision-aiding vs machine decision making.

Perhaps this link gives an overview of the problems in what you seek: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/automation-intelligence-autonomous-machines-human-factor-moin-rahman

For the human view: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/sunday-review/learning-to-see-data.html?smid=tw-share. “Perceptual learning is such an elementary skill that people forget they have it.”

And a human-machine view: http://xstar.ihmc.us/research/projects/EssaysOnHCC/Perceptual_(Re)learning.pdf

And other essays in this series: Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) (http://xstar.ihmc.us/research/projects/EssaysOnHCC/) particularly sense making.

The bottom line remains; you cannot display that which you cannot comprehend. At best we might avoid those situations which have a higher probability of unforeseen influences and particularly those with the potential for adverse interactions. Many situations already have boundary alerting or identification; airspeed, altitude, attitude, terrain, other aircraft, systems status.