Deliberation Matrix(DM)

A Deliberation Matrix(DM) defines an evaluation process. It can be of three types:

• DM type 1: Stakeholders are filling each cell of the Matrix by entering a judgement. Each judgement value is assigned to a color.
• DM type 2: It works the same as above but each judgement is created picking up Indicators from a Kik. At each cell, 1 to 5 indicators may be used. It creates a "Basket of Indicators". A relative weight is assign to indicate which indicator is more or less important in the basket. Each judgement weight are summed up, then compared. The bigger value wins and produces the overall color of the basket. This is the resulting display of the cell. A toggle button display or hide indicators of the overall Matrix. New Indicators can be added to the Kik, adding them to the Indicator selector, available for the entire DM.
• DM type 3: Here the Indicator selector shows the Indicator Candidates, coming from the parent KRR(an ex-ante process). New Indicators can be added(ex-post) to the Indicator Candidates selector, extending the list to all Stakeholders, and extending the Kik used by the KRR.

Requirements for new DM creation

• DMs type 1 and 2 belong to a Worksite. So the Worksite should exist first,
• DM type 2 needs a unique Kik crosslink, so the Kik should exist first,
• DM type 3 belongs to a KRR, so the KRR should exist first(following the KRR requirements).

DM profile creation

Each ePLANETe object has a profile. In a complex Gallery, fields of objects may be key features. So it is important to choose carefully some values in order to make the object work as expected.

The DST Gallery has been designed in order to create many deliberation evaluations rapidly. Thus DMs type 1 and 2 are not dependent of the same structure of crosslinks which are necessary when a KRR exists in the evaluation process workflow. A DM type 1(without indicators) do not need crosslinks to run and DM type 2(with indicators) uses a unique and direct crosslink to a Kik. It means the inheritance architecture of crosslinks from top level(Worksite) down to grandchildren objects like DM type 3 or K4U are not necessary in this case.

However, DM type 3 is a child of a KRR and thus it uses the KRR resources(Objects to Compare and Issues axis values, and crosslinks).

The key feature fields of the profile are as follow and are displayed depending on the type of the DM:

• Community, this selection list put permission boundaries to the object, so only member of the Community selected here will be able to see and manage the KRR. Also this value will be assigned to new indicator creation during evaluation,
• Status, defines whether if the Deliberation is still active or not. If closed, the Stakeholder cannot add any new values. Deliberation can be viewed only. You may reopen it later on. It is just a kind of lock/unlock mecanism.
• Type of Deliberation Matrix, this condition the following field. If you select "Color only DM"(this is type 1) or "Indicators DM"(this is type 2) then you must choose the parent Worksite. If you select the "Indicators from KRR DM" then you need to select the KRR.
• Stakeholder axis, define the category of Stakeholder that will produce judgements.
  • Participants, define ePLANETe user that can add, change or delete values of a specific category. The coordinator has permissions in all categories. All members of the community can see all data of all categories.
    Remark: To add a user as a Participant, this user should exist on the Gallery. It means it must have visited once the Gallery to get the user automatically created, otherwise you won't see this user available to be added as a particpant! This technical problem will be addressed in the next release of the Gallery.
• Ojects to Compare*, define what will be compared in the evaluation(scenarios, etc.).
  • Country, Land Use Type are only used for K4U evaluation(reserved for futur needs).
• Issues*, defines the criterias crossed with the objects to compare that help knowledge carriers to define which indicators are pertinent in this context.
  • Sub-Goals, are only used for K4U evaluation.
• Judgement values, define for each judgement what is the corresponding color. The order of the signification is important for resulting judgement: the higher takes precedence when different judgements exist in the same cell.
  Add a signification with no colour if you want to start the signification without colours.

Ojects to Compare* and Issues* are not available when DM type 3 has been selected because it reuses the values of the parent KRR profile.

-> create a new DM

Doing a Deliberation with indicators(DM type 2 and 3)

Open a DM and select the "Deliberation Matrix" tab or, choose the "Mutlicriteria Evaluation / Deliberation Matrix" option of the main menu and click on the blue cube(the first one from left to right).

A grid should show up otherwise check that the requirements and profile is setup as explained above.

This grid has three dimensions:

• Category of Stakeholders, displayed as top tabs,
• Objects to Compare, displayed in columns,
• Issues, displayed in rows. Remark: if you see sub-goals you did a mistake. The sub-goals are only defined for a K4U evaluation object. Unfortunately these field are available when creating a DM  and we cannot avoid it at this time. Keep in mind that it is useless to create sub-goals in DM profile. The sub-goals only concern the K4U evaluation.

First you click the tab for which you are a participant(a yellow text reminds your permissions).

Then you click on the "Switch to edit" toggle button of the cell in which you want to add indicators. A "+ Add" button is toggled. 

Then use the Indicator selector box either to select the indicators you are going to insert in the cell, or create a new indicator that does not exist in the list. We call the process of creating a new indicator to the "mini-Kik" process. Fill the three fields:

• Title
• Description
• URL to the indicator, may define an external resource. Creating this kind of indicator will create an indicator in the Kik but it provides a small icon in the Indicator selector box to navigate to the external resource.

The search input box helps to retrieve the desired indicator if the list is big.

Once indicators are selected, click the "+ Add" button to insert indicators in the cell. You have created what we call a "Basket of indicators". As a good practice we recommand to select a maximum of 5 indicators even if there is no technical constraint. You may use the "reset" button to unselect all check boxes.

For each indicator of the basket give a judgement and a weight from 0 to 100.

Click again on the "Switch to view" toggle button to display the resulting color and value of the basket. The algorithm works as follow: each judgement weight are summed up, then compared. The bigger value wins and produces the overall color of the basket. Also the size of the color bar shows horizontaly the value. Use the "Switch to edit" toggle button to display the details.

Once an indicator is added in a cell, it is automatically saved in the database. There is no "save" button. Because several participants may work at a same time, the "refresh button" at the bottom of the screen refreshes the display of the entire DM.

Important Remarks about the new indicator creation process:

1. Be aware that technically the Kik in which you create new indicator from DM type 2 or 3 could not be empty. Otherwise you will get an error message and no new indicator creation from the DM will possible. As a workaround, just create one fake,  test, or real indicator in the Kik. This will unlock the new indicator creation process from DM. This indicator creation from DM 
2. When you add a new indicator in the "Mini-Kik" of a DM Type 3, there is an implicite order given to the system that the indicator becomes pertinent in all cells of parent KRR. Thus, when you visit the KRR back(after the new indictor creation in its DM type 3 child), you observe that the indicator is displayed in all cells with pertinence index 4. This is normal and this is what should have been manually done if you would have added the indicator in KRR first(ex-ante process). An Indicator created from a DM has its "Source creation" field auto populated with "Manually by user from Deliberation Matrix (Ex-Post)" text. Otherwise this field is auto populated by the "Manually by user(Ex-Ante)" text. 
    

Add a comment

You may want to start a discussion in the group of stakeholders concerning an indicator existing in a cell. Click on the "+" button beside the indicator. This creates a small forum icon indicating the discussion is created and that the participants of the stakeholder may add comments. Click the icon to do so. For now a discussion can only be deleted by administrator.

Remove an indicator

Click on the capital "X" button beside the targeted indicator to remove. This will remove the indicator from the cell only, not from the Indicator Selector. The indicator remains available for further selection.

Doing a deliberation without indicators(DM type 1)

Open a DM and select the ""Deliberation Matrix" tab or, choose the "Mutlicriteria Evaluation / Deliberation Matrix" option of the main menu and click on the blue cube(the first one from left to right).

A grid should show up otherwise check that the requirements and profile is setup as explained above.

This grid has three dimensions:

• Category of Stakeholders, displayed as top tabs,
• Objects to Compare, displayed in columns,
• Issues, displayed in rows. Remark: if you see sub-goals you did a mistake. The sub-goals are only defined for a K4U evaluation object. Unfortunately these field are available when creating a DM  and we cannot avoid it at this time. Keep in mind that it is useless to create sub-goals in DM profile. The sub-goals only concern the K4U evaluation.

First you click the tab for which you are a participant(a yellow text reminds your permissions).

Then you click on the "Switch to edit" toggle button of the cell in which you want to put your judgement.

Select it, click to "Switch to view" toggle button to switch back to view mode of the cell.

Once an indicator is added in a cell, it is automatically saved in the database. There is no "save" button. Because several participants may work at a same time, the "refresh button" at the bottom of the screen refreshes the display of the entire DM.

Read the DM

Click the "Deliberation Matrix Presentation" tab. All members of the Community to which belongs the DM can see the DM and its values, at any time.

Because a DM is built with 3 axis it may be interesting to display the grid from different axis perspective. It may be also usefull to shrink the display to one value of the perspective choosen and to display only one indicator. So it can filter the DM to get a relevant display usefull for the groups of stakeholders or to ease the analysis of the final result. Use the selectors at the top of the grid to do so:

• Perspective(stakeholders as default), select one of the 3 axis, showed in upper tabs,
• Perspective value(all as default), permits to restrain the display to one unique value of the perspective choosen above,
• Columns(Object to Compare as default), defines which of the 2 remaining axis do you want to display in colums. Then the rows will use the latest axis(no need to select it).
• Restrict to indicator, shrinks the display of the grid to only one indicator.

A "toggle indicators" button display the resulting grids with or withour indicators.

Mouse hover over the column or row titles to display them fully in a tooltip box.

View the "Knots"

Click the "Deliberation Matrix Knot View". A Knot represents the cross of the 3 axis of the DM. At this cross there are indicators with their judgment weight and value. So the Knot View help to report all the indicators entered in the DM. Each columns of the knot view produces statistics for eack knot:

• The Indicator column produces summary of judgements, how many times they have been used and the relative weight of each judgement in percentage, whenever it has been used.
• The Stakholder column sums up how many time a category has used the indicator.
• The Object to Compare column sums up how many time the indicator has been used for each Object to Compare.
• The Issue column sums up how many time the indicator has been used for each Issue.
• The "Toggle comments" button may add an extra column with column discussions.

In this view the first column list the indicator sorted alphabetically. Then the 3 axis may be displayed in the other columns of the table, in different orders. The sorting of the resulting table goes from left to right columns and produces same statistics as described above:

• Column 1, defines what will be the next columns after the column Indicators, that will be displayed alphabetibally,
• Column 1 narrowed down to, defines which axis value of the Column 1 that should be displayed only,
• Column 2, defines which axis to display on the right of column 1,
• Restrict to indicator, shrinks the display of the table to only one indicator.

Print

Every display can be printed in order to produce a CSV like table. It could be usefull to include a display or a selection in a word processing document. This is why the print output is minimal and is clean of any formatting special effects.