If you have a software problem (e.g., error messages like "Index out of bounds"), please contact me. If you obtain analysis results that seem to be incorrect, or if you have questions regarding the DANA method or software, feel free to mail me as well, but please do so after verifying that the information on this web site does not provide the explanation you seek.
How do I change the name of a concept?
To rename a case or an arena, select it in the arena pane and (calmly) click it again. Windows will open a small
editing pane that allows you to modify the name. Finish by pressing the Enter
key. Instead of clicking a concept twice, you can also select it and then choose the main menu option
Case|Rename concept.
To rename an actor or a factor, you must switch to "dictionary mode" first and
then follow the above procedure. This will rename the concept throughout the
entire case. If you want to change the name of a factor in one perception only,
you will have to delete it from the perception graph and add a factor with the
new name.
How do I format comment text?
DANA does not support rich text for comments, so comments are stored as plain text in the
DANA case.htm file. But if you really want to make comment texts
look better when your case is viewed in a regular browser, you can insert HTML
tags to make text come out in <b>bold face</b>
or <i>italics</i>, or to force a line break
(with <br>).
How do I print a single diagram?
By pasting it into some Windows document (e.g., Word or PowerPoint) and then
print this document.
Click on the Copy button of the DANA case window; this will place a
metafile on the Windows clipboard. Go to your Windows document and select
Paste Special and then select the format "Enhanced Windows Metafile". You
may need to modify its size (call up the Picture toolbar and select the
Crop button) and possibly improve its quality (see below). Then print the
document.
How do I prioritize goals?
A goal reflects how an actor values a change in a factor. Goal priority in DANA
is inferred from the utilities associated with each possible change.
Double-click on a factor and the goal dialog should appear. Click on the change
the actor values most. Underneath, a smiley
appears to indicate "medium" utility. All the other changes
automatically get a utility that is less than "medium". You can change the
highest utility using the Up and Down arrow keys on your keyboard: Up will
increase it, Down will decrease it. Note that when you go Down several times,
the goal type changes from a desirable change to an undesirable
change, i.e., a change with negative utility.
How do I make a prospect
or link uncertain?
Select the factor and click on the prospect button, or double-click on the link.
The change dialog should appear, showing the seven possible changes. Click on the
change you consider most likely to occur. Underneath, the figure "100%" appears
against a dark gray background. You can change the uncertainty using the Up and
Down arrow keys on your keyboard: Up will increase the uncertainty, Down will
decrease it.
How do I define and evaluate a
specific strategy?
If you want to evaluate a particular combination of tactics, you can define
these tactics by Ctrl-clicking on one of the seven changes in the range bar of
each of the actions in a perception graph. The selected change will be
highlighted in purple like this:
. To unselect,
Ctrl-click on the change again. To evaluate, open the Analysis dialog,
select the actor level property Inferred Strategies, and check the
Chosen field.
Can't change default goals, prospects or links
Indeed, this is not yet possible. You will have to wait and see if the next DANA version will support
customized utilities and probabilities.
Can't load a downloaded DANA
case, even though it looks OK in my web browser
Unfortunately,
most browsers modify HTML pages slightly. Sometimes, comments are left out or
tags are changed (e.g., converted to upper case, or extended with extra
attributes). When you save a file using your browser, these changes make that
the file does not have the exact format that DANA requires. To prevent DANA from
getting stuck while reading a case file, make sure you have an original
DANA case.htm file on your computer. To download from the Web, use the Find folder
dialog to surf to a published case. DANA retrieves the "raw" HTML code and thus
avoids the conversion problem.
Can't change the size of factors in a perception graph
DANA automatically creates shapes that will be large enough to contain the name of the factor
and additional symbols for actions, prospects, and goals. But you have some control over
the way in which long factor names are broken into lines: To avoid a line break at a space, replace
the space by an underscore (_).
Can't search for items or comments
Indeed, DANA has no search features. For most editing purposes, the drop-down
lists for arenas, actors and factors should suffice. If you need to search a
case for a particular phrase, I suggest that you open the
DANA case.htm file with your standard web browser and use its
search functions instead.
When clicking on the link HERE in the mail I received from the DANA web site, I get a message "Your access code is invalid or has expired"
This can happen when the security settings of your web browser are such that it asks you for permission to download files. This way, it follows the link twice, while the access code will work only once. To prevent this from happening, you should configure your web browser to accept downloads from the DANA web site (http://dana.actoranalysis.com).
C:\DANA.
When opening a case, I get an
error: "Invalid DANA case file"
This can happen when you click the OK button of the Find folder
dialog before the case is completely loaded in its browser pane. Navigate
to the case folder (or case web page) once more, wait to see the case appear in
the browser pane, scroll down all the way to the bottom. There you should see
the end of the case marked by two successive horizontal rules. If these are
visible, the case has been (down)loaded completely, and you can click the OK
button.
When selecting an actor
view, I get an error: "Invalid parameter"
This error message is generated by Windows when it tries to draw an image that
is too big to display. You may be able to prevent it by changing the display
settings of your computer (with the Windows Control Panel) to a lower
color quality. The preferred color quality for DANA is true colors, but
this requires a lot of memory. Alternatively, you can make your perception
diagrams smaller, for example by condensing their layout and/or choosing a
smaller font. Then select Case|Options from the main menu and enter lower
values for the diagram dimensions. This will reduce the size of the bitmaps that
DANA needs when drawing the perception graphs.
DANA takes forever to load a case - I have to end the task using the Windows Task Manager!
DANA saves a case according to a strict format. If you edit a case file with an
HTML editor, this usually adds a lot of additional HTML code, but even small
changes can be enough to confuse DANA. Therefore, only open original
DANA case.htm files!
DANA does not display
the entire diagram!
This may happen when the diagram height and width have been changed to lower
values. You can increase the diagram size in the dialog that appears when you
select Case|Options in the main menu.
Images do not show!
When the images do not show in the analysis pane or in the Find folder dialog, this means that the GIF folder
associated with the case is missing. This can happen when you have created a new
case or opened a case that you received from some other user. Save the case (it
is while saving that DANA (re)creates
the GIF folder and its images) and when you view the case or the analysis
results again, the images should appear.
After pasting, the picture
does not look nice!
A first solution may be to double-click on the picture in your Word document and
then close it. Usually, this will make the line graphics look smoother. However,
it may be that the text in the factors is distorted. It seems that Word does not
convert metafiles too well. As a workaround, I usually paste to a PowerPoint
document first. There it seems to work OK. Again, you should double-click on the
image. PowerPoint will prompt you to convert the figure. Click Yes, and
PowerPoint will break up the figure in its separate components. To avoid messing
up your diagram, immediately group them using the Draw|Group menu option.
If you like, you can now easily change the font using the Format|Font
menu option. Then copy the figure and paste it into your Word document.
When was DANA first conceived?
The original idea dates back to 1996. At that time, the
interdisciplinary MSc program on Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and
Management that was (and still is) my vocation, was developing. Multi-actor
systems, unstructured policy problems, and complex decision making processes are
at the core of this program. Being trained as computer scientist at Leiden
University, I felt an urge to bring some more rigor in the methods for actor
network analysis that we teach our students. Two of my colleagues at that time
quickly shared my enthusiasm about developing DANA: policy scientist Mark van
Twist especially liked the idea of capturing divergent perceptions to study
strategic actor behavior, hidden agendas, and other political aspects, while
econometrician and transport expert Ron van Duin saw DANA as a useful tool to
support the design of multi-stakeholder logistic systems. Once I acquired
funding for the EPSILON project in the fall of 1997, we
could spend some serious time on DANA. During the project, which lasted until
the summer of 2000, the three of us have had
many inspiring discussions, which invariably ended in still more features to be
implemented in DANA — by me, the computer scientist.
What does the DANA logo stand
for?
The logo symbolizes an actor network. The three nodes represent actors, the
connecting circle their interactions and dependencies. Obviously, when it is
also to be used as a 32x32 pixel icon, a logo should be highly stylized. The
triangular arrangement of circles is easily to recognize. When devising the
logo, I wanted to somehow depict actors as autonomous minds having their own
thoughts. The primary colors red, green and blue refer to the sheer endless
variety of colors they can generate. If you look closely at the logo, you'll see
that the nodes actually attempt to depict dark globes with a spirit-like figure
inside. Larger versions can be found on the DANA
Community page. You are welcome to use them whenever you present work you
did with DANA.
Haven't I seen DANA before?
Indeed you may have. The first DANA prototype was delivered in 2000 at the close
of the EPSILON project, which was part of the Dutch
Land Water Milieu Informatietechnologie research program. The work on DANA that I did
with Mark van Twist and Ron van Duin has been published on various conferences
(see the DANA bibliography),
and the first DANA prototype has been used by MSc students and PhD students in
their research.
Why are there so few articles on DANA?
Various reasons, but they all boil down to a well-known problem: lack of
resources. Other (funded!) research projects required my attention, and between
the fall of 2000 and the spring of 2004, I had to devote much of my time to
management tasks in my function as Associate Dean of Education of
our faculty. As a result, I had no time to further develop the DANA software.
The DANA prototype delivered in 2000 was far from mature, and this impeded its
use by others. It supported the formal representation of actor networks and
perception graphs, but the number of queries that could be performed was quite
limited. As a result, there have been but a few applied actor network analysis
projects, while the conceptual innovation of DANA (the capability of automated
multi-actor problem analysis) remained underarticulated, untried, and — by
consequence — unpublished.
Last update 2007-12-28