Monday 27 September 2010

Colombian plane crash - Southbeach Notation hexagons (knowledge)

This model illustrates the use of Southbeach Notation 'knowledge' agents (hexagon shape). Here, they are used to represent what is known or believed about the crash (based on a BBC news article in this example), so that evidence and beliefs are kept separate to the root cause analysis (RCA).

In Southbeach, hexagon refers to Knowledge (what we know or believe), i.e. information, facts, data, news, intelligence, context, circumstance, belief, assertion, evidence, rumor, opinion, sacred cows, elephants in room, realities, principles, truth, laws, science ..... Southbeach gives you nine colors for setting out your knowledge context in a Model, and the shape is transparent so that it does not intrude on other important areas of the diagram.

Of course, all other agents are a form of knowledge, but hexagon is used to distinguish those elements of knowledge where you explicitly don't want to take a perspective (useful or harmful etc).

Knowledge can be given other attributes, such as insufficient or potential knowledge, and it could be typed, e.g. evidential knowledge, hearsay, etc. using agent type, allowing for the generation of different MyCreativity questions (screen shot) using, for example, the 5x5Whys rule set of RCA (root cause analysis).

In some Southbeach Models, users include such knowledge in the notes field of any agent. Now there is a shape to make the important statements explicit in the visualization and generation of suggestions.