Mental Moves #2: Creative Swapping of Mental Elements

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19 min readApr 27, 2023

“Project”, “Platform”, and Creative Swapping

This post is part of the Mental Moves knowledge project that aims to collect related articles about the concept of “Attachance” and more examples about “Moving between Thematic Spaces” in order to edit a book. You can find more details in the following links:

March 4, 2023 — Creative Action: The Chance-configuration Theory and Beyond
March 8, 2023 — Creative Action: The Attachance of Moving Mental Elements
March 10, 2023 — [Knowledge Engagement] How to develop a concept called “Attachance”?
March 10, 2023 — #TalkThree 19: The Art of Semantic Awareness
March 23, 2023 — The Knowledge Engagement Framework (v4)
March 24, 2023 — TALE: A Possible Theme called “Mental Moves”
March 24, 2023 — The Concept of Attachance (A list of articles)
March 30, 2023 — Mental Moves #1: The Transformation of Mental Elements

I coined the term Attachance by combining Attach and Chance in 2018 to discuss some ideas related to Affordance, a core idea of Ecological Psychology.

In 2022, the development of Attachance was tied to the development of Thematic Space which refers to a specific type of container: cognitive container. You can find more details in [Slow Cognition] The Development of the concept of “Thematic Spaces”.

On March 10, 2023, I wrote a short post about the development of “Attachance” on Linkedin. On March 24, 2023, I collected a set of articles about the concept of “Attachance” and “Moving between Thematic Spaces”.

A Model for Case Studies

In a previous article titled Creative Action: The Attachance of Moving Mental Elements, I developed the model below for case studies.

Each project corresponds to a thematic space.

Each project is supported by a digital platform.
A mental element can move between two thematic spaces.

On March 29, 2022, I conducted the first case study which is based on the following article:

Jan 17, 2022 — Thematic Space: The Art of Continuous Discovery

I applied the above basic model to the case study. The diagram below is one of the outcomes of the case study.

You can find more details in Mental Moves #1: The Transformation of Mental Elements.

Creative Swapping

Today I am going to share a case study about “Creative Swapping”.

Swapping means interchanging. For example, the diagram below is a Mental Configuration that refers to a nested structure: Platform[Project(People)].

I used the above Mental Configuration for two projects and I found there is a Creative Swapping between these two projects.

2020: The Platform Ecology Approach
2022: The Project Engagement Approach

In the Platform Ecology Approach, the theme of “Project” was used to support the theme of “Platform”.

In the Project Engagement Approach, the theme of “Platform” was used to support the theme of “Project”.

Each project refers to a thematic space. Then this case means a Creative Swapping between two thematic spaces.

The “Platform” Thematic Space

I have been paying attention to “Platform” for over ten years. As a participant in digital platforms, I am both a user, a curator, and a maker. In the past several years, I also developed several models to guide my reflections on practical experiences on digital platforms. In 2021, I wrote a book (draft) titled Platform for Development: The Ecology of Adult Development in the 21st Century.

On Jan 21, 2022, I used the Knowledge Discovery Canvas to reflect on my “Platform” thematic space. See the diagram below and more details in Mapping Thematic Space #3: The “Platform” Thematic Space.

At the “Perspectives” block, you can see “Platform Ecology”.

Platform Ecology refers to my vision of applying the ecological practice approach to study Platform-related social practices. I consider it as a knowledge enterprise that could lead to different projects such as the Platform-for-Development framework, Platform as Container, Platform Innovation as Concept-fit, etc.

In 2021, I also used the Theme U diagram to represent the landscape of “Platform Ecology”.

The goal of Platform Ecology is to develop a series of heuristic models and frameworks for theory-based reflection and practice-based reflection. The above diagram has presented a list of such models:

DEKIN Innovation System (2018)
Social Platform Experience Design (2020)
The Platform-for-Development Framework (2020)
Action-based Creativity (2020)
The Supportive Cycle model (2021)
The Concept-fit Framework (2021)

On Oct 1, 2020, I developed the Platform-for-Development Framework (v0.1):

How did I develop it?

I list 25 types of O-E relationships for discussing platform ecology. One type of O-E relationship is the “People (O) — Platform(E)” relationship, it is the primary O-E relationship within platform ecology. Inspired by Activity Theory and Derek Layder’s Social Domains Theory, I got an idea for discussing this primary O-E relationship.

The first step is expanding O-E to O-A-E. The A stands for Activity. Inspired by Activity Theory, I adopted the concept of “Activity” and turned the O-E relationship into the O-A-E relationship (People — Activity — Platform).

There are several models and approaches within the theoretical tradition of Activity Theory. In 2014, Andy Blunden edited a book titled Collaborative Projects: An Interdisciplinary Study and argued that there is a need to establish a concept of “project” as a unit of activity theory and human sciences.

I was fascinated by Andy Blunden’s innovative approach. The “project” is a perfect concept for conceptualizing various activities within platforms. Inspired by Andy Blunden’s idea “Project as a unit of activity”, I use “Program” to refer to informal organizing activities on platforms. Thus, I made a new triad: People (O) — Program (A) — Platform (E).

The second step is adopting Derek Layder’s Social Domains Theory as another theoretical resource.

Layder suggested four principal social domains: Psychobiography (including self-identity), Situated activity, Social setting (including fields), and Contextual resources. We have to notice these four social domains are “principal” and they can be subdivided into smaller “domains” or even understood as component elements of larger “domains”.

Thus, I applied it to expand the People (O) — Program (A) — Platform (E) framework:

Psychobiography: Purpose (personal motivation on the development of self-identity)
Situated activity: Program
Contextual resources: Position
Settings: Platform

The result is a 5P framework: People (O, organism) — Purpose (M, motivation) — Program (A, activity) — Position (R, resources) — Platform (E, Environment).

If we consider “Purpose”, “Program”, and “Position” as three aspects of “Project” — (this is not the original claim of Andy Blunden’s approach) — then we get a simple model of a nested social structure:

If we put Project and Platform together, I’d like to claim that Project is an “embedded social context” and Platform is the “setting of Project”. Without any Project (informal and flexible social activities), a Platform is only a Tool that helps People take individual actions.

You can find more details in The Platform for Development (P4D) Framework (v1.0).

On May 29, 2022, I developed the Platform Genidentity Framework.

What’s Platform Genidentity? I use the concept of Platform Genidentity to describe a process of keeping the uniqueness of a platform within a long-term duration. For example, Google.com (a Search Engine), Wikipedia.org, and YouTube.com, these three websites keep their original core design without major changes.

In order to understand the complexity of Platform Genidentity, I developed the following two new concepts:

Platform Core: a basic unit of a platform. For example, a Tweet, a YouTube video page, a Q&A page on Quora, etc.
Platform-ba: a platform-based sociocultural field. For example, YouTube-ba is a YouTube-based sociocultural space. You can find more details here.

For Platform Ecology, we need to discover the sources of Essential Differences and Situated Dynamics. I think the sources are Platform Core and Platform-ba. However, they don’t work as a one-to-one mapping relationship.

Inspired by Project-oriented Activity Theory, I used the movements of Objectification to understand the development of Platform-core. Eventually, I developed a new tool called Platform Genidentity Matrix. See the table below.

You can find more details in Platform Genidentity: The Movements of Unfolding Uniqueness.

The “Project” Thematic Space

My “Project” thematic space was born from my “Activity” thematic space.

In 2020, I worked on the Activity U project and wrote two books (drafts). The first book is about the landscape of Activity Theory and the second book is titled Project-oriented Activity Theory Andy Blunden’s “Project as a unit of analysis of activity” to Activity Theory.

Originally, I used “Project Engagement” to name the second part of my 2020/2021 book Project-oriented Activity Theory.

On Dec 13, 2020, I published the Platform-for-Development (P4D) framework (v1.0). The article defined a new unit of analysis: Platform(Project). Later, I developed the Platform-for-Development (P4D) framework (v2.0) and I renamed the original framework as Developmental Project Model on Mar 31, 2021.

The v2.0 of P4D framework is a brand new approach for studying platform-based social practice. It has a set of sub-frameworks. The Developmental Project Model is part of the P4D family. However, we can use it individually.

You can find more details in Developmental Project Canvas.

I also used the Developmental Project Model for Project-oriented Activity Theory.

On Jan 18, 2022, I decided to separate my “Project” thematic space from my “Activity” thematic space. You can find more details in Thematic Space: The Project Engagement Toolkit for Creators.

From Jan 2022 to July 2022, I worked on the Life-as-Project project and expanded the Project Engagement approach to the Project-centered approach.

In Thematic Space: The Project Engagement Toolkit for Creators, I discussed my “Project” thematic space and highlighted the following three points:

First, the Developmental Project Model is an independent framework.
Second, there is a concept called Projectivity behind the module 4 Zone of Project and the module 5 Developmental Project Model.
Third, I also adopted Howard E. Gruber’s Evolving Systems Approach to the study of Creative Work (1974,1989) for module 6.

Originally, the Project Engagement toolkit was born from the work of Project-oriented Activity Theory. In 2022, I applied it to the Life-as-Project project. During the process, I realized that I need to develop a Project-centered approach.

On Feb 13, 2022, I published Life Discovery: The Life-as-Project Approach and suggested a strategy for developing a Project-centered approach:

Project as A Multiple Dimension Concept

This simple strategy creates a new thematic space for creative exploration. I roughly use the Project-centered approach to name this new idea and applied them to the Life-as-Project project.

Later, I selected some ideas from the Life-as-Project project and added them to the Project Engagement approach.

The diagram below represents the multi-theme development of Project Engagement in 2022. You can find more details in Slow Cognition: The Development of “Project Engagement”.

The Project Engagement (v1.0) introduces two frameworks and one method which are about the “Person — Project” relationship. Why does a person start or join a project? What does a project look like?

Developmental Project Model
Zone of Project
Cultural Projection Analysis

From Jan 2022 to June 2022, I worked on testing Project Engagement (v1.0) and realized that I should expand it to the “Project — Project” relationship. The following six parts were introduced in Project Engagement (v2.0):

Activity Landscape Analysis
Project Network
Thematic Spaces
Mapping Project Network
Significant Insights Analysis
Life-History Topology

Finally, I detach the Platform Genidentity framework from the Platform Ecology project and attach it to the Project Engagement approach. The outcome is the Project Engagement (v2.1) approach which has multiple levels.

I consider the process of writing the thesis about v2.1 as the movement of Crystallize Thematically. It went beyond the original scope of v1.0.

The above diagram is a multi-level approach. Why do I consider “Platform” as a unit of analysis for the Project Engagement (v2.1) approach?

In fact, the “Platform” unit of analysis refers to the “Genidentity” of “Platform”.

The term “Genidentity” refers to the transformation from a theme to a project, then a platform. How does a project keep its uniqueness?

This idea is a Significant Insight because I realized that I can detach the Platform Genidentity framework from the Platform Ecology project, and attach it to the Project Engagement approach.

Why did I make this decision? How did I discover this Attachance (the value and meaning of Attaching acts and Detaching acts)?

First, I asked myself the following question:

Now, I have v1.0 and v2.0. What about v3.0?

Second, I used a new idea I learned recently to frame this question for my answer.

In July 2022, I read a book titled The Scientific Project of Sociology (Ping-keung Lui, 2010) which is the second series of lectures on sociology-philosophy, taught in a course for MA(Part-time) students at the Department of Philosophy, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Fall 2010. Its original title was “The Philosophers, the Sociologists, and the Scientific Project of Sociology”.

Ping-keung Lui aims to build a brand new theoretical sociology as a candidate for the paradigm of sociology. According to Lui, “There are three kinds of theories in sociology, namely, social theory, sociological theory, and theoretical sociology. ”

Lui developed his account in two steps. First, he curated some theories in sociology and philosophy for his lectures by selecting, quoting, analyzing, and discussing them. Second, he created his own perspective by reflecting and responding to these theories. This is an amazing example of Curativity as Creativity.

To be honest, it is a challenge to read this book for me. However, it offers me a guide to reading some social theoretical thinkers such as Schutz, Giddens, Bourdieu, Goffman, etc.

Moreover, his theoretical sociology offers me a meta-theoretical framework for reflecting on the development of the Project Engagement approach.

There are three focuses in his account: subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and otherness. I used these three focuses to frame my question.

V1: the “Person — Project” relationship is about Subjectivity.
V2: the “Project Network” complexity is about Intersubjectivity.
V3: the “X” … should be about Otherness.

Lui uses the term Otherness to refer to “non-human others” such as Society, Death, etc. For the Project Engagement approach, It seems the notion of “Genidentity/From Project to Platform” echoes the focus of Otherness.

In this way, I imagined the v3 and found a solution, and used the solution to expand the v2.

A “Compression — Expansion” Attachance

Now we can use the Container[Confliguration(Mental Elements)] model to discuss the above stories.

The above diagram highlights several Mental Elements:

#1/#2: Andy Blunden’s view “Project as a unit of activity”
#3: Derek Layder’s Social Domain Theory

I placed #3: Derek Layder’s Social Domain Theory in my “Activity” thematic space because it refers to theories about human activities and social practices. I roughly put sociological theories into this thematic space.

You can find the above picture on the Activity Analysis website. I made a clear distinction between my “Activity Theory” thematic space and my “Activity” thematic space.

We read books about Activity Theory, Practice Theory, and other social theories. The website aims to build a bridge between theory and practice.
We will start with Activity Theory and expand to Practice Theories and more theoretical accounts. We will use the theoretical concept of “Activity” for articles about Activity Theory. However, the word “Activity” should be understood as a normal word for articles about other theories.

The book Sociological Practical is also written by Derek Layder.

To be honest, I didn’t accurately apply Andy Blunden’s “Project as a unit of activity” for the Platform for Development framework (v0.1). First, I used “Project as a unit of Activity Theory” to bridge “Activity” and “Program” and developed a triad: People (O) — Program (A) — Platform (E).

Why did I want to turn Activity into Program? Because I wanted to use “Program” to adopt Derek Layder’s Social Domains Theory.

The second step is adopting Derek Layder’s Social Domains Theory as another theoretical resource.
Layder suggested four principal social domains: Psychobiography (including self-identity), Situated activity, Social setting (including fields), and Contextual resources. We have to notice these four social domains are “principal” and they can be subdivided into smaller “domains” or even understood as component elements of larger “domains”.
Thus, I applied it to expand the People (O) — Program (A) — Platform (E) framework:
Psychobiography: Purpose (personal motivation on the development of self-identity)
Situated activity: Program
Contextual resources: Position
Settings: Platform

The outcome is a 5P framework: People (O, organism) — Purpose (M, motivation) — Program (A, activity) — Position (R, resources) — Platform (E, Environment).

The final step is Conceptual Compression. I used “Project” to replace 3P.

I call this new framework “Platform for Development (P4D)”. This is its 0.1 version. If we consider “Purpose”, “Program”, and “Position” as three aspects of “Project” — (this is not the original claim of Andy Blunden’s approach) — then we get a simple model of a nested social structure.

If we put Project and Platform together, I’d like to claim that Project is embedded social context and Platform is the setting of Project. Without any Project (informal and flexible social activities), a Platform is only a Tool that helps People take individual actions.

Andy Blunden didn’t offer details of the internal structure of a project. In fact, the above creative process encouraged me to take on this challenge. It led to the second part of the book Project-oriented Activity Theory: “Project Engagement”.

Later, I worked on the Platform for Development (v1.0) and expand the basic model to a new framework. See the diagram below.

The above model is formed with two triangles. The second one uses “Purpose, Program, and Position” to describe three important aspects of Projects.

I’d like to point out that this is not the original claim of Andy Blunden’s approach. What I am looking for the “Platform for Development” framework is a concept that can describe informal and flexible social activities.
If we put Project and Platform together, I’d like to claim that Project is embedded social context or situational context and Platform is the setting of Project. Without any Project (informal and flexible social activities), a Platform is only a Tool that helps People take individual actions.

I also used “Project as Situational Context” to name this triangle. See the diagram below.

“Project as Situational Context” (Oliver Ding, 2020)

This step refers to Conceptual Expansion.

Now we see a “Compression — Expansion” Attachance.

A “Synchrony — Diachrony” Attachance

The second story is about the notion of “From Project to Platform”. There is a specific type of Attachance behind the story: the “Synchrony — Diachrony” Attachance.

Synchrony and Diachrony refer to two different but complementary approaches in linguistic research. While the synchronic approach studies language at any given point in time without considering its history, the diachronic approach takes the historical view into account.

A “Synchrony — Diachrony” Attachance means switching from the landscape (network, system, etc) perspective to the development (history, dynamics, etc) perspective.

The above diagram highlights several Mental Elements:

#6: The notion of {Platform[Project(People)]}
#7: The Platform Genidentity Framework
#8: The concept of “Otherness”
#9: The notion of “From Project to Platform”

The concept of “Otherness” is part of the “Theoretical Sociology” thematic space. I started reading Ping-keung Lui’s books and papers in April 2022. Ping-keung Lui aims to build a brand new theoretical sociology as a candidate for the paradigm of sociology.

There are three focuses in his account: subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and otherness. I used it as a Frame of Reference to reflect on the development of the Project Engagement approach.

V1: the “Person — Project” relationship is about Subjectivity.
V2: the “Project Network” complexity is about Intersubjectivity.
V3: the “X” … should be about Otherness.

In fact, I asked the following question on July 20, 2022.

Now, I have v1.0 and v2.0. What about v3.0?

Lui uses the term Otherness to refer to “non-human others” such as Society, Death, etc. For the Project Engagement approach, It seems the notion of “Genidentity/From Project to Platform” echoes the focus of Otherness.

In this way, I discovered the following three keywords for the Project Engagement approach (v2.1).

Phase 1: Significance is about the “Person — Project” relationship. Why does a person start or join a project? What does a project look like?

Phase 2: Complexity is about the complexity of a network of projects. How does the network of projects represent the dynamics of individual life and social life?

Phase 3: Genidentity is about the transformation from a theme to a project, then a platform. How does a project keep its uniqueness?

The significant insight is the third keyword. I realized that I can detach the Platform Genidentity framework from the Platform Ecology project, and attach it to the Project Engagement approach.

I wrote a short note about this Attachance and published it on Linkedin. Now, we can find give a name to this Attachance. See the diagram below.

The Synchronic perspective sees Project and Platform as two entities at the same time. In 2020, I moved from the ‘Project’ thematic space to ‘Platform’ thematic space and attached the concept of ‘Project’ to the Platform for Development framework.”

The Diachrony perspective sees Project and Platform as one entity at different times. In 2022, I moved back from the ‘Platform’ thematic space to the ‘Project’ thematic space. This time, I detached the concept of ‘Platform’ and ‘Platform Genidentity’ framework from the Platform Ecology approach and attached them to the Project Engagement approach (v2.0).

A “Whole — Part” Attachance

In fact, I wrote an article titled Social Platform Experience Design (#SocialPxD) on March 4, 2020, and used two views to explain the following diagram.

The above diagram is a model for building social platforms. I didn’t use the term “Project” because I started working on “Project-oriented Activity Theory” on Dec 26, 2020.

How did I explain the above diagram?

Unfortunately, the below diagram doesn’t fully describe the whole framework. In order to avoid the “curse of diagrams”, I have to point out that there are two ways to understand this framework: the zoom-in approach and the zoom-out approach.
The zoom-in approach is also a lifecycle view. This view focuses on one particular social platform with a process perspective.
The lifecycle view suggests that everything will transform from one stage to the next stage. For social platforms, I suggest the following four stages:
Social Practice Stage
Social Software Stage
Social Product Stage
Social Platform Stage
…
The zoom-out approach can be called an ecology view too. This view focuses on the landscape at one particular time from an ecological perspective.
The ecology view focuses on the “organism—environment” relationship. It suggests each and every living organism has its specific surrounding medium of environment called niche. An organism is also part of other organisms’ environment.
For the PxD framework, I consider five components: People, Practice, Software, Product, and Platform. Each component can be considered as Organism and Environment as well. Let’s use O to represent Organism and E to represent Environment. Now, we can generate the following O-E relationships.
People (O) — Platform (E)
People (O) — Product (E)
People (O) — Software (E)
People (O) — Practice (E)
People (O) — People (E)
Practice (O) — Platform (E)
Practice (O) — Product (E)
Practice (O) — Software (E)
Practice (O) — Practice (E)
Practice (O) — People (E)
Software (O) — Platform (E)
Software (O) — Product (E)
Software (O) — Software (E)
Software (O) — Practice (E)
Software (O) — People (E)
Product (O) — Platform (E)
Product (O) — Product (E)
Product (O) — Software (E)
Product (O) — Practice (E)
Product (O) — People (E)
Platform (O) — Platform (E)
Platform (O) — Product (E)
Platform (O) — Software (E)
Platform (O) — Practice (E)
Platform (O) — People (E)
In order to understand these 25 types of O-E relationships, we can apply some ecological theoretical ideas for further discussion. For example, the Affordance Theory is very useful for thinking about the “People (O) — Software (E)” relationship. For talking about the “Product (O) — Platform (E)” relationship, my own idea of Curativity Theory is relevant.

Wow! This is a great list!

On Dec 13, 2020, I selected the People (O) — Platform (E) relationship as the starting point for developing the Platform for Development framework (v1.0).

It is clear that I took the “Whole — Part” attachance. I didn’t work on the whole list of 25 types of O-E relationships. I only focused on the primary one.