D as Diagramming: The DEEP Framework

A story of making a framework with a diagram

“D as Diagramming” is a new category of this publication. I am going to write some short notes on my “Diagramming as Thinking” activities. I tend to use my own meta-diagrams for organizing my ideas. Thus, the “D as Diagramming” project is also a test of these meta-diagrams.

If you read my previous articles, you probably know I am recently working on a theoretical framework: Platform-for-Development (P4D). The framework combines my interests on Digital Platforms and Adult Development. I consider Digital Platforms as Developmental Platforms for People. The framework is inspired by Ecological Psychology, Activity Theory, and other theories. From the perspective of Ecological Psychology, Platforms are social environments. From the perspective of Activity Theory, I consider Developmental Projects as Activities. So, the core of the framework is Platform (Project).

I have edited my writings about the P4D framework and turned these articles into a book draft. You can find a summary of the framework and book draft here.

Last week, I signed up to a private community called Future Salon. I had a short conversation with the curator of the community. I used the word “DEEP” to suggest some ideas about deep community engagement. This experience inspired me to create the DEEP framework with the WXMY diagram.

This article is a note about the process of creating the DEEP framework.

This time I only use the following diagram. It has several names such as the WXMY diagram, Container Z diagram, or Echozone diagram, etc. It originally appeared as an independent meta-diagram, I called it the WXMY diagram. WXMY stands for When X Means Y. Now, it is part of the ECHO Way (v2.0). The basis of the diagram is using three containers to explore boundary innovation.

The short conversation about DEEP engagement and Future Salon gives two key words, DEEP and Future. So I defined the following three containers:

• Container X: Self, a person wants to actualize a Possible Self with a Developmental Project.
• Container Y: Social Environment, a platform wants to actualize a Possible Practice with projects initiated by his members.

The third container is Container Z. I define it as Future. For Self, the Future means Possible Selves. For Social Environment, the Future means Possible Practice.

• Container Z: Future, it means a connection between a person’s Possible Selves and a platform’s Possible Practice.

Development is all about Future. This diagramming process is a great starting point because it adopts some new creative triggers such as “DEEP”, “Future” and the WXMY diagram to the P4D framework.

The second step is about language engagement. In other words, I play a language game with the creative trigger “DEEP”. Now I have two “D” and two “P”:

• D: Developmental Project and Developmental Platform
• P: Possible Selves and Possible Practices

How about the two E? Can I use some words that start with E to describe the Self — Social Environment engagement process? The outcome is the following movements:

• The Exploit — Engage movement
• The Escape — Endorse movement
• The Expand — Empower movement
• The Explore — Embrace movement

Here I use “movement” to refer to an ideal social interactive situation between Self and Social Environment. Each movement is formed with a Challenge and a Response. For example, a person takes a step of escape from a task on the platform or leaves the platform. For the platform, this action means a Challenge. Ideally, the person expects a supportive response from the platform. For example, the platform responds to the Challenge with an endorsement which highlights the person’s contribution and achievement.

I roughly listed the above four ideal movements. It’s possible to discover more than four movements. Of course, a person can’t alway receive supportive responses from his social environment. I just select the ideal situation for our discussion.

This is just the initial work. We can make a better version later.

The key of the WXMY diagram is the Container Z which is named Echozone too. By focusing on the Echozone, the WXMY diagram is perceived as two parts:

• Figure: It means the main object that we are looking for. It is the inner space of the Echozone.
• Ground: It means the background of the main object. It is the outer space of the Echozone.

Now let’s have look at the final diagram of the DEEP framework:

Inside the Echozone, we see six things:

• Possible Selves
• Explore
• Expand
• Possible Practices
• Empower
• Embrace

I consider the successful connection between Possible Selves and Possible Practices are based on the following two important movements:

• The Expand — Empower movement
• The Explore — Embrace movement

These two movements lead us to Future! The initial work is done! Though it is a rough inspiration, it made a good discovery for Future.

The difference between Diagramming as Thinking and Writing as Thinking is the ways we use words. For the former, the words are used independently. These words are keywords which build connections to my memories about some theoretical knowledge and my previous ideas. For the latter, the words are used within sentences.

I use diagrams for knowledge curation because diagrams are a great effective meditation for curating concepts and presenting relationships between concepts. The outcome of Diagramming as Thinking are frameworks, sub-frameworks, models, etc.

In order to help readers understand the DEEP framework, I add more notes about several keywords mentioned above. See the Notes section below.

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Notes

1. Developmental Project

I coined this term and developed a model for the Platform-for-Development framework. A Developmental Project is initiated or joined by a person in order to support his personal development. You can find details about Developmental Project Canvas here.

2. Developmental Platform

This is the core concept of the Platform-for-Development framework. A Developmental Platform is perceived by a person in his social environment such as large organizations or digital platforms. You can read details about the Developmental Platform here.

3. Exploit v.s. Explore

These two keywords are inspired by James G. March’s “Exploitation and Exploration”. You can read the following piece to get some ideas.

In an echo of more general theories of adaptation, theories of the adaptation of a scholarly field describe a process involving struggles between a core establishment committed to a relatively coherent conception of truth and various peripheral challenges to that conception. The struggles reflect a necessary tension between the developments, refinement, and exploitation of existing knowledge and methods and the exploration of possible new directions. A hallmark of effective knowledge refinement and exploitation is a tight network among researchers. Such networks thrive on easy communication, and communication thrives on unified understandings. Consensus on the fundamentals is essential. Exploration, on the other hand, involves the examination of numerous possibilities, many of them dubious. It thrives on diversity and deviance. Because the efficiencies of coherence are useful immediately, they dominate local adaptive processes of learning. However, they are invitations to long-run stagnation. With exploratory diversity, disciplines, cultures, and languages turn in upon themselves. Thus, the emphasis in adaptive theory on maintaining a mix of both exploitation and exploration. (Explorations in Organizations, James G. March, 2008, p.329)

4. Expand

The word “Expand” is inspired by Activity Theorist Yrjö Engeström’s Expansive Learning model. The model is built on the Russian school of cultural-historical activity theory. The Expansive Learning model is a new theory of learning and knowledge creation. According to Engeström:

So the theory of expansive learning must rely on its own metaphor: expansion. The core idea is qualitatively different from both acquisition and participation. In expansive learning, learners learn something that is not yet there. In other words, the learners construct a new object and concept for their collective activity, and implement this new object and concept in practice. This shift in metaphors has been noted by Paavola, Hakkarainen and Lipponen (2004) who suggest knowledge creation as a new, third metaphor, and by Fenwick (2006b) who suggests participation, expansion, and translation as relevant alternative and complementary metaphors for theorizing work-based learning.

5. Possible Selves

In 1986, Hazel Rose Markus and Paula Nurius published a paper titled Possible Selves to challenge the traditional theories of self-knowledge. According to Markus and Nurius:

Possible selves represent individuals’ ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming, and thus provide a conceptual link between cognition and motivation. Possible selves are the cognitive components of hopes, fears, goals, and threats, and they give the specific self-relevant form, meaning, organization, and direction to these dynamics. Possible selves are important, first, because they function as incentives for future behavior (i.e., they are selves to be approached or avoided) and second, because they provide an evaluative and interpretive context for the current view of self.

6. Possible Practices

Since 2001, a group of philosophers, sociologists and scientists have rediscovered the practice perspective and used it as a lens to explore and examine the role of practices in human activity. Researchers called it The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory.

I suggest “Possible Practice” as a new term which expands the scope of contemporary practice theories from “actual actions and existing practice” to “possible actions and possible practice”. I consider “Possible Practice” as the special unit of analysis for my approach “Ecological Practice”. Again, the Ecological Practice Approach is not an alternative to contemporary practice theories, but expands their scope and contains more theoretical concepts such as James J. Gibson’s Affordance.

You can find more details from here: The NICE Way and Possible Practice.

7. Language Engagement

There are many ways to develop a new concept. Since concept is related to words which is the basis of language, I use the term “Language Engagement” to describe creating new concepts by playing acronyms and other games of words. As James G. March mentioned, the evocation of meaning is a natural product of crossing disciplinary, cultural, national, and linguistic boundaries. He says,

Nevertheless, for those who see the creative beauty generated by the wanderings of ideas, the magic and mystery of language is a wonder of intellectual discourse. Scholars celebrate the evocation of new meanings that arise when others discover, not exactly what they thought they meant when they wrote their words or characters but rather what the words or characters themselves might be imagined to mean. (Explorations in Organizations, 2008, p.140)

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