Collaborative opportunities

Possible collaborative projects

This is a list of possible projects for further developing DoView Planning and outcomes theory. Get in touch if you would like to collaborate on any of these, or if you like, just let us know if you are working on some of them independently. Also, get in touch if you want to explore other possibilities.

Further developing DoView Drawing Rules

• Further developing the existing DoView Drawing Rules. We already know that DoView strategy/outcomes diagrams created with the DoView Drawing Rules effectively capture strategy and can support better decision-making in many different settings. The aim is for DoView diagrams to become a widely used visual language for working with any type of strategy. One that captures all of the key information decision-makers need immediately available when making high-stakes strategic decisions.

• Developing standard ways of representing the underlying evidence for ‘This-Then’ claims being made in a DoView. This project is a subpart of enhancing DoView diagrams as a visual language capturing any type of strategy.

A standard for storing and sharing DoView diagrams

• Developing a standard for storing and sharing DoViews. For instance, at the moment, the DoView legacy app saves DoViews in XML format. An XML schema, or other format, could be developed that contains all of the key elements that could be included in any DoView. This would enable portability of DoView diagrams between different apps, platforms and systems.

• Version‑control system that snapshots DoView diagrams over time, enabling before/after comparisons and archiving for institutional memory.

Shareable Collections of DoViews

• Developing collections of DoViews that are expert or AI-verified and capture evidence-based best practice in different domains using the standard format of DoView diagrams. This would speed up best practice sharing as others could ‘borrow’ evidence-based best practice to include in their own DoViews.

DoView’s effectiveness in communicating strategy

• Comparing standard strategic planning and strategy communication documentation with DoViews. A very small informal study showed that planners thought that DoViews were 40% more effective at communicating strategy than traditional strategic planning documentation. It would be interesting to conduct a proper study on this.

• Governments spend considerable resources in producing documentation about what they are doing. It would be interesting to see if stakeholders and members of the public find that DoView diagrams, such as a Whole of Government DoView would be a better way of communicating with stakeholders and the public about what government is trying to achieve.

DoView-creating prompts

• Creating prompts that can be used with other AI systems to draw DoViews. This has been done with the ChatGPT DoView Drawing Prompt. The same could be done for other AI systems.

Embedding unique features of the DoView legacy outcomes app into other apps, platforms and systems

• Embedding DoView Planning and the unique features of the DoView legacy app in other apps, platforms and systems. Anyone is free to include the unique features of the DoView legacy outcomes app into other systems (with acknowledgment). Get in touch if you want to work with us on this.

Using DoViews to abstract ‘This-Then’ claims from any knowledge product or domain

• Exploring the use of DoViews in quickly summarizing, abstracting and improving understanding of a wide range of knowledge products that are in any way relevant to taking action in the world.

• Developing browser plug-ins that enable AI to immediately convert the content of any web page into a DoView, surfacing the ‘This-Then’ claims being made on that webpage or in a research report, or other similar types of articles.

• Comprehensively DoViewing current theory and knowledge in different scientific domains. Scientific domains can be regarded as a set of ‘This-Then’ claims. As such, they can be represented in the form of a DoView diagram. See the Research page for how DoView Planning can be used for research and the Research Domain DoViews page for examples of how a whole research domain can be captured in a DoView strategy diagram.

• Developing a platform for creating large-scale DoViews of scientific domains such that researchers could contribute to it, identify portions of the DoView that their current research projects are focusing on, and amend it in light of their research findings. These research domains would also be used by research funders and stakeholders interested in knowing about and applying research in the domain.

• Automatically grading the strength of each “This‑Then” link in a DoView using study metadata (effect sizes, quality scores), visualizing the strength of evidence within a DoView.

Real-time DoView generation

• Developing AI-generated real-time DoViews of presentations such that, as someone is presenting, a real-time DoView would be being produced showing the emerging ‘This-Then’ claims the presenter is making as they make them.

• Regarding the previous idea, having AI evaluate in real time the existing evidence for the ‘This-Then’ claims that are emerging from a presentation.

Further developing outcomes theory

• Further developing outcomes theory as a generalizable theory that can be used to conceptualize any type of outcomes system. An outcomes system is any system for identifying, prioritizing, aligning, measuring outcomes, implementing action, attributing change, setting accountabilities or assessing impact in any setting. This makes outcomes theory a general meso-level theory that can apply to human and AI organizations, initiatives and agents.

• Exploring the use of category theory or other mathematical approaches to mathematize outcomes theory. This would enable formal specification of its principles, ensure internal consistency of the principles within it and possibly identify new principles that logically follow from the current outcomes theory principles.

DoViews in AI management, transparency, alignment and control

• Exploring the use of DoViews in AI transparency, alignment and AI control as a way of specifying and quickly communicating the outcomes, lower-level steps and risk management strategies any AI agent or system is using.

• Specifically, having AI systems and agents represent their interpretation of a user’s text prompts in the form DoView diagrams the user can interact with to communicate with the AI system or agent. The user could then confirm that the AI system understands their full intention. They could also use it to tweak what they want to the AI system to do. An AI agent could then report back on the progress it is making on the DoView it initially developed.

• Developing methods by which watchdog AI systems could audit whether an AI system is conforming to its stated DoView which it has agreed to implement (as outlined in the point above).

• Specifically, using a watchdog AI agent to monitor a subject AI agent’s real-world action and map each of its real-world actions back onto the relevant box in its DoView diagram. Automatically traffic-lighting each box in near-real time, raising alerts if the subject AI agent’s behavior drifts outside the approved pathway set out in the DoView, and storing an audit trail.

DoViews in grantmaking

• Developing a platform for grant-making organizations to publish DoViews of the outcomes they are seeking and have grant applicants specify what they are trying to do by offering to develop subparts of the funding organization’s overall DoView.

DoViews in regulatory contexts

• In regulatory contexts, using DoViews to specify the regulation-related outcomes that companies or others should be seeking and the lower-level steps and risk management strategies they should be employing. Auditing agencies auditing organizations for regulatory compliance against such DoView diagrams.

New ways of communicating and collectively working with DoViews

• Storyboarding a DoView. Improving communication of what is believed should happen regarding a DoView, by storyboarding it and guiding people through its boxes with a brief multimedia overview of each step in the DoView.

• Experimenting with VR spaces for representing and collectively working with DoViews as user-friendly ‘shared thinking tools’ in richer immersive interactive environments.

Using DoViews as ‘strategy graphs’ to structure incoming and outgoing communications

• Automatically creating DoViews capturing all of the action an individual wants to take in the world in any area of their lives.

• Using DoViews created in the point above as the basis for organizing communication streams about any kind of project or action. Besides receiving separate texts, emails, social media updates, and Slack messages as usual, a user would be able to see their content mapped to boxes within the relevant DoView. This takes advantage of DoViews capturing a person or organization’s ‘strategy graph’. As new messages come in, they would be divided into segments associated with different boxes within the relevant DoView. The user would then be able to view all their inward and outward communications via various channels within the context of the specific DoView section they are working on, and they could send replies directly from the relevant DoView box as the user decides on the next action they want to take.

Using DoViews for ‘What-If’ simulation

• Building tools for using DoViews for simulating different possible strategic pathways as one moves through a DoView. Explore turning DoView diagrams into executable models (Bayesian network, Markov chain or system-dynamics stock-and-flow). Letting planners run Monte-Carlo or What-If analyses, see probability distributions for downstream outcomes, and test which levers give the biggest impact before changing their real-world system. 

• Developing DoViews to specify branching chains of ‘This-Then’ strategic logic, allowing the system to ‘lock in’ certain sequences of ‘This-Then’ logic. This would assist with time-constrained strategic decision-making. In effect, the number of ‘degrees of freedom’ in the strategy space would be reduced as agreement could be obtained from decision-makers before the point when time-pressured decision-making has to be undertaken. Decision-makers would just immediately implement the subparts of the DoView that have been pre-agreed, freeing them up to use the limited time they have available to focus on arising strategic decisions that could not be preapproved.

Comparing DoViews from different companies.

• As a piece of business school research, one could take a set of DoViews for major companies and compare companies’ different strategies. This could enable patterns to be identified, best practice shared and the analysis could look at metrics of company success related to what they have in their DoView strategy diagrams.