One of the great advantages of Tinderbox is the ability to start quick, to jot notes down, and to add structure and fill in relations incrementally over time.
In this sense, Tinderbox can function like a simple legal pad. Just start writing notes; it doesn’t matter if dates are intermingled with names of people because you can easily manipulate the notes once they are down. You don’t need to spend time creating a structure to capture information and the risk your data will ossify is much lower than when using a spreadsheet or table in Microsoft Word.
Still, I have found that there are a few structural elements that I always end up adding to my new case files. I now typically add these right at the outset. Doing this first speeds input and helps manage the information quickly.
Initial Investigation: Managing Questions
Investigations are always already about asking and answering questions. Asking questions is how you get information and each new piece of information generates more questions. When I have a new question, I want to get it down as fast as possible, but I also want to be able to pull out a list of all the questions I have regardless of where they are in my Tinderbox document. I do this by using a consistent note-title format and an agent. Every question gets its own note and every question-note starts with “Q: ” (e.g., “Q: Who are the most important people?”).
Viewing the Questions agent in Outline View gives you a list of all questions. The italic note names indicate that these are aliases.
These are all collected by an agent I call (imaginatively) “Questions.” An agent is a special note that collects aliases of other notes within it. I create a Questions agent that seeks out every note whose name includes “Q: “ Because I rarely use the “Q: ” phrase in any context other than a question, this agent is very accurate. Viewing the questions agent in outline view quickly gives me a list of all of the questions I have raised.
In addition to collecting aliases of notes, agents can also perform actions on the notes it collects. I like my questions to be a conspicuous, high-visibility yellow in my Tinderbox maps. I have the Questions agent change the color of every “Q: ” note by setting the agent’s action to “Color=yellow”.
The agent dialog box for the Questions agent.
Thus, once the agent is set up, there is no interruption in the creation of questions. One does not need even to toggle a checkbox as the note is created; the name creates its nature as a question.
Initial Investigation: Prototypes for People and Events
In starting the investigation phase of any case – whether I’ve had a client come to me with a new problem, whether a formal complaint has been filed against my client, or whether I am trying to determine whether there is a case to pursue – there are a few specific questions that I know I’ll need to answer: (1) who are the key people? and (2) what happened? These are among the fundamental first questions.
The answers to these questions arise over time. I typically create two prototypes to help me collect the information I need to address them. A prototype in Tinderbox is a note with certain characteristics. Notes based on that prototype inherit those characteristics, including the characteristic of being-based-on-that-prototype.
Thus, I almost always create two prototypes: one for persons and one for events. I give each a distinct color, sometimes a badge (a symbol in the upper right corner of the note), and then specify a few attributes (i.e., metadata) that I want the notes based on that prototype to carry.
An image of two prototype notes. The icons on the right side of each are badges.
For the protoPerson prototype, the key bits of metadata to collect are fairly obvious: name, address, contact information, etc. These are already available in Tinderbox’s list of available attributes.
For the protoEvent prototype, the key info to track is the date of the event. To track this, I create a new called EventDate. Once this is captured it is easy to create chronologies and useful lists of dates. In a later post I will discuss using agents to collect and manage a Cast of Characters and a Chronology.
