Network matrix

Map a system or a problem. List its nodes and rate every pair once. Strong links pull together and the clusters show up on their own. Then look at them from several sides: a network, a sorted matrix, nested circles, what flows, and a map on scales you choose.

After Charles L. Owen’s Structured Planning, Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology. How it works · Credits

Map name Moment in time

Strong
Medium
Weak
None

Click a cell to cycle, or focus it and press 0 to 3. Don’t agonize over the hard ones. Pick a rating and move on, because the cells where people disagree are the ones worth talking about.

Save to your computer

Downloads a small file with everything on this map, including what’s inside each node, the personas and the map. Nothing is stored on this site. Open the file here later to keep working, on this computer or another one. Keep several maps as separate files if you like.

Link to this map

This link holds the whole map, after the #. Browsers never send that part to the site, so nothing is stored here. Bookmark it to come back to this version, or send it to someone. Anyone with the link can see the map, and some chat apps cut long links short, so the file is the safer way to keep your work.

Print or save as PDF

A short report of this map: the diagram, the clusters, the matrix sorted and unsorted, what flows, the map, and on every link what flows each way, what’s missing and any tension. In the print dialog, choose Save as PDF to keep a file.

This map as a code

The same as the file, as text you can paste into an email or a chat. Paste it into the box below to open it again, or send it to someone mapping the same nodes so you can compare.

Compare with someone else’s map

Two people, or two teams, rate the same nodes without talking. Paste the other map’s code and the cells where you disagree are outlined in the matrix. Talk about those, starting with the cells two steps apart.

Opening a code replaces everything on this page with the work in it.

For classes and workshops

Link for your group

This link opens the tool with your nodes already listed and nothing rated. Post it where your group will click it, and everyone starts from the same list.

Combine many maps

Collect everyone’s codes and paste them into the Class view. It shows where the group agrees and where it splits, and can make one combined map to work on together. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Run this as a class

Classes are created and run from the Teacher page.

How to run the Network matrix with a class

Show exchanges

How it works.

List the nodes. The people and organizations in a system, or the parts of a problem: needs, requirements, features, constraints. Up to twenty. Any node can hold a sub-network of its own.
Rate every pair once. Strong, medium, weak or none, pair by pair in the matrix or one node against the rest. Go quickly. The pairs you hesitate over are the ones worth talking about.
Read the clusters. Nodes that share strong and medium links form clusters, and clusters join into larger ones until everything meets at the top. Step through how they form in the network, the sorted matrix and the nested circles. Where a node also belongs with another cluster, it’s marked as an overlap.
Name what flows. On the Exchanges tab, mark what moves each way on a link and what’s missing. The Flow view draws it.
Place it on a map. Choose two scales that matter to your question, such as effort and impact, and drag the nodes onto them. The clusters come along.
Ask what each cluster is for. Start at the bottom of the tree, name the purpose that holds each cluster together, and work up. This is where Owen’s Means/Ends analysis begins.

Using it with a class or a workshop? See running the Network matrix with a group.

Credits.

Structured Planning was developed by Charles L. Owen at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, over several decades of project work with his students. This tool follows his overview, Structured Planning: The Process, figures 7 to 15.

Owen’s interaction matrices descend from Christopher Alexander’s Notes on the Synthesis of Form (1964), the early work that led Alexander to A Pattern Language (1977). Overlaps follow Alexander’s “A City Is Not a Tree” (1965): real structures are semi-lattices, where a part can belong to more than one cluster.

The Sorted matrix, the Circles, the Step control, rating one node against the rest, the Flow view and the Map follow Analysis and Transformations, software designed at Doblin Group in Chicago in 1993 by Vijay Kumar (then Vijay Sivasankaran) and Pamela Mead, with Pam leading the interface. I used it for years until newer Macs stopped running it. This one runs in a browser, which should buy it a few more operating systems.

Clusters are found with the Louvain method (Blondel and colleagues, 2008), a modern stand-in for Owen’s VTCON program.

An independent adaptation by Erik Kiær for teaching. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Institute of Design or Illinois Institute of Technology.

Your work.

Everything you enter stays in your browser. Your map is kept in this browser as you work. To keep it safely, or move it to another computer, use Download file on the Share tab and open the file later, or copy the code or the link to this map. None of these is stored on the site.

The one exception is a class run from the Teacher page, where pressing Send to class stores your map with the class until its end date. What a class keeps