We’re very excited to announce that the iilab team will be working with the Influence Mapping community. They will be developing the “Influence Mapping Toolbox”, a resource which will help both newcomers and experienced mappers get started, learn and achieve their influence mapping goals.
iilab will develop the structure and initial content for the Toolbox. The aim of iilab is to release a beta version by the end of November, which will serve as the basis for a more ambitious and fancy web application.
The iilab team behind the project is formed by Kat Austen, Head of Research and Design, assisted by Lilas Guevara, Research Associate, and Jun Matsushita, iilab’s Founder.
You can reach the team via influencemapping@iilab.org or by following our Google Group thread. Upon contacting them, please consider the following questions:
- Thinking back to when you first started on your influence mapping project, what were the questions you had and what type of resource would you have wanted as a guide?
- Do you know anyone who’s just getting started on an influence mapping project?
We encourage you to participate in this research, and talk with the iilab team about your ideas, process and methods to help make this resource become useful to you and others. The process The team will be researching the Toolbox structure by looking into two aspects:
- Newcomers to influence mapping projects, to make sure that the iilab team can build the most useful structure and the best user experience.
- Established projects, to understand common themes in order to develop taxonomies that cover the existing fields of practice.
After this investigation, they will generate a draft structure for the toolkit in the form of user journeys. This will be shared and iterated based on the feedback received by the team.
Regarding the Toolbox Content the iilab team is currently considering collecting data about projects, methods and tools. Alongside a survey of projects, the team will research practices of collaboration for a variety of teams and projects and research methods. Research into tools will start from Friedrich Lindenberg’s Social Network Analysis Project Survey.
Alongside the beta version of the Toolbox launched by the end of November, a ”State of the Art” document will be published to highlight key findings and provide an entry to the Toolbox.