In essence, building the maps involves three steps:
- breaking down the subject into meaningful ideas;
- figuring out the relationships between those ideas; and,
- expressing the ideas and relationships visually.
(Explorer and Hub views)
Issues (or questions
) are raised,
Positions (or answers
) suggested in response to these
Issues, and
Supportive and Opposing Arguments advanced for and against the
Positions (and each other).
(Zoom view)
Each building block has its own color to make it easier to see the types of ideas and relationships at a glance.
There's a wider set of building blocks beyond the three core ones, but the core set of
Issues,
Positions, and
Supportive and
Opposing Arguments can be combined and recombined many times to build rich maps on any scale.