D as Diagramming: An Integrated Framework for Studying Knowledge Diagrams (Part 3B)
The perspective of “Mediating Instrument”: Part v.s. Whole and Ambiguity v.s. Precision.
This post is part of the D as Diagramming project which aims to explore the power of diagrams and diagramming for turning tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge.
In a previous article, I introduced an integrated framework for studying knowledge diagrams. The framework offers four perspectives. You can find more details from the links below:
- Part 1: Cognitive Representation
- Part 2: Cultural Significance
- Part 3A: Mediating Instrument (the Means-End spectrum, The Part — Present Evolution)
The next post will discuss the last perspective.
Contents
7.6 The Part — Whole Curativity
7.6.1 Diagram-in-use: The Innovation Design Approach
7.6.2 Product Field: Shapes of Innovation
7.6.3 Diagram Network and Diagram Blending
7.7 The Ambiguity — Precision Dynamics
7.7.1 Peter Senge: How to make sense of a diagram
7.7.2 Visually Enhanced Therapy: Using Diagrams in Psychotherapy
7.7.3 Misdiagramming and Contaminated Mindware
7.8 Resources for Understanding Activity
7.6 The Part — Whole Curativity
The Past — Whole Curativity is inspired by the principle of the Hierarchical structure of activity. I will discuss diagram-in-use as a whole and a particular action of using a diagram.
There are two ways to understand the principle of the Hierarchical structure of activity. The first one is the traditional three-level hierarchy which is developed by A. N. Leontiev. The second one is a four-level hierarchy that considers Activity Networks as the fourth level.
The hierarchical structure of activity was originally conceptualized by A. N. Leontiev (1978). We have to note that Leontiev was developing a psychological theory at the individual level with the concept of Activity. Thus, we will see three levels of activity correspond to three levels of psychological notions. The three levels of activity are activity, actions, and operations. The three levels of psychological notions are motive, goals, and conditions.
Though Leontiev’s goal is to develop a new psychological theory, many researchers adopted this three-layer model as an analytical tool for empirical research projects. In recent years, activity theorists went beyond Leontiev’s theoretical scope and expanded activity theory to “activity system” and “activity network.” Following this trend, researchers developed new versions of the hierarchical structure of activity for theoretical and empirical purposes.
I consider “activity network” as the fourth level of activity. According to Clay Spinuzzi, “The notion of activity networks, first forwarded by Engeström with explicit reference to Latour (1992, Chapter 1), is a way to deal with the insularity implied by Leontiev’s activity systems. Activities could be understood as related to one another rather than as independent. And those relations — those networks — take the form of standing sets of transformations…One variation understands activity networks as chained activity systems…In this variation, activity system are linked by their ‘corners’ (Helle, 2000, p.89), and each corner is something that has been produced by one activity system to be consumed by another (Korpela, Mursu, & Soriyan, 2002; Miettinen, 1998) This production-and-consumption relationship characterizes the standing set of transformations performed by the activity network.”(2008, p.74)
Clay Spinuzzi also points out another variation of activity networks: overlapping activity systems. He said, “Multiple activity systems converge on the same object, although that object is construed in different ways. Engeström, in fact, counsels us to ‘follow the objects’ (2004, p.7) to understand how activity networks develop. ” (2008, p.77) This variation is a promising direction to connect Activity Theory with the current dynamic work landscape.
You can find more details about the hierarchy of activity in a previous article.
I use the term Curativity to discuss the relationship Part — Whole. Hierarchy is an important type of Part-Whole relationship, but I want to discuss the Part-Part connection too. So I use the Part — Whole Curativity to name this issue and use it for discussing diagram-in-use.
Inspired by Activity Theory, we can roughly understand a diagram and a diagram-in-use as a whole and consider each particular usage as a part. In other words, diagramming is an activity while a particular diagram-in-use is an action. Moreover, we can use Activity Network to understand Diagram Network and Diagram Blending.
The concept of Diagram Network echoes the idea of Activity Network. Each diagram refers to an activity and a Diagram Network refers to an Activity Network.
7.6.1 Diagram-in-use: The Innovation Design Approach
Iain Kerr and Jason Frasca are co-founders of Emergent Futures Lab. They wrote a book titled Innovating Emergent Futures: The Innovation Design Approach for Change and Worldmaking. The authors adopt ideas from embodied cognitive science and complexity science to challenge traditional linear design innovation models. They argue that creativity is worldmaking and the process of innovation should be understood as a double loop of change-in-degree giving rise to change-in-kind and vice versa.
The above right diagram is a basic model of their innovation design approach which highlight four basic tasks: Engage, Disclose, Deviate, and Emerge. According to the authors, “…we don’t start by ideating, empathizing or innovating, we start by immersing ourselves deeply in an ongoing reality. Therefore, the Engage phase begins the process.” (2021, p.138)
- Engage and Disclose are the tasks necessary to prepare for innovation,
- Deviate and Emerge are the two distinct processes that foster the two distinct forms of change: change-in-degree (Emerge), and change-in-kind (Deviate).
- While Deviate fosters a disruptive change, which comes early in the process,
- Emerge as a developmental process always comes at the end to make things real.
They don’t offer a diagram to present a simple sequential order such as (1) Engage, (2) Disclose, (3) Deviate, and (4) Emerge. They suggest 15 practices of using the basic model diagram (2021, p.141)
- Engage: 1). Opening & Grounding, 2). Attuning & Gathering, 3). Pattern Recognition.
- Disclose: 4). Defining, 5). Uncovering, 6). Exploration.
- Deviate: 7). Staging, 8). Experimenting, 9). Transversal Articulation, 10). Worlding, 11). Strategic Joining.
- Emerge: 12). Emergent Transition, 13). Coevolution, 14). Ecosystem Building, 15). Amplification.
These 15 practices are parts of the whole approach. If we adopt Activity Theory, then the whole approach is an activity while each practice is an action.
The authors emphasize that innovation has no fixed starting point, “Innovation has no fixed path. And ultimately innovation has no proper endpoint. Where you start and how you proceed is entirely dependent on where you are and where you are trying to go.” (2021, p.153)
In order to describe non-linear thinking, they design the above diagrams to visualize different ways of using the diagram and the whole approach. Each diagram represents a path of innovation. This is a great example of diagram-in-use because it indicates that there are two types of diagram-in-use:
- Sub-diagrams of a diagram
- Use case of a diagram
I consider the above three paths of innovation as sub-diagrams of the basic model diagram. From the perspective of Activity Theory, each path refers to an action while the whole approach refers to an activity.
You find more examples of sub-diagrams of a diagram from a previous article: D as Diagramming: The Organization-for-Opportunity Framework.
7.6.2 Product Field: Shapes of Innovation
In previous articles, I have introduced a product innovation framework called Product Field which was developed by Klaus-Peter Frahm, Michael Schieben, and Wolfgang Wopperer-Beholz.
According to the authors of the framework, “The visual form of the Product Field is a Mandala. According to the Grove’s Groups Graphics Keyboard, a mandala helps you and your team to perceive wholeness and see gaps and unities under a diversity of perceptions.” Also, the Product Field canvas is designed as a coordinate system that is defined by two dimensions: 1) Creation/Realization: a product follows a Purpose (for stakeholders) — to — Implementation (for customers) trajectory, 2) Introduction: a product follows an Inside (an organization) — to — Outside (market) trajectory.
An interesting thing to note here is that the Product Field canvas can be used to represent several shapes of innovation such as Problem-Solution Fit, Scratch your own itch, Eat your own dog food, Co-Creation, Lean Startup, etc. You can watch the video below from 30:28 to find the section on Shapes of Innovation.
Wow, the field is a super container because it contains so many techniques for innovation. In other words, the Product Field is a whole while several shapes of innovation are parts. Though the Product Field is a canvas, we can apply the Part — Whole Curativity to discuss it too. The canvas-in-use is an activity while a particular use case of a shape of innovation is an action.
7.6.3 Diagram Network and Diagram Blending
One of the important themes of the D as Diagramming project is Meta-diagram which leads to Diagram Blending and Diagram Network. In 2018, I wrote a 108-page thesis that develops a theory about diagrams and diagramming. I consider two groups of ideas for my theory about diagrams. The first group is “meta-diagram, diagram, and diagram system” and the second group is “diagramming as an activity of knowing, theorizing and reflecting”.
The notion of “meta-diagram” considers a particular type of diagram as an independent thing that doesn’t have to be a representation of an existing theory or model. For example, the 2x2 matrix diagram is a meta-diagram that doesn’t refer to any concrete theory or model such as BCG’s Growth-share matrix. A diagram system is a series of diagrams that share an intrinsic spatial logic and a visual identity.
The notion of “diagramming as an activity of knowing, theorizing and reflecting” adopts a process view to understand Diagrams. In other words, it is “becoming.” That means we can use diagrams as a tool for our thinking. We don’t need to consider all diagrams as final outcomes.
In the past several months, I applied several meta-diagrams to discuss various topics and connected these topics together. Eventually, I developed a new method called Diagram Blending and a new concept called Diagram Network.
The above picture shows an example of Diagram Blending. The above-left diagram is named Tripartness which is one of a set of Meta-diagrams I designed in the past years. The Tripartness meta-diagram can be expanded to a Diagram Network. Or, we can say that it is an outcome of a process of Diagram Blending.
The Tripartness diagram has two pairs of concepts:
- Corner and Zone
- Center and Context
In order to understand these concepts, we can use the following three diagrams:
- Corner: The Dialectical Room
- Zone: The Interactive Zone
- Center and Context: The Hierarchical Loops
You can find more details from a previous article D as Diagramming: Tripartness and Diagram Blending.
I also expanded the iART Diagram into a diagram network with the above three diagrams. You can find more details here.
Anticipatory Activity System is a good example of Diagram Blending because it was inspired by two theories: Activity Theory and Anticipatory System Theory.
The above diagram is inspired by two sources: iART Diagram Notation and Second-order Activity. The iART Diagram Notation discusses several pairs of concepts. Some of these concepts are adopted from Activity Theory. For example, Object and Outcome. I unpacked these two concepts into two pairs of concepts:
- Object: Object and Objective
- Outcome: Result and Reward
The Second-order Activity diagram is inspired by the conversation with Martin Prechelmacher and Stephan Kardos. The conversation is about sustainable business development. If we apply Activity Theory to develop a sustainable design framework, then we can pay attention to the negative outcome. And we can consider the negative outcome as an object of second-order activity. If we apply Activity Theory to develop a sustainable design framework, then we can pay attention to the negative outcome. And we can consider the negative outcome as an object of second-order activity.
Then, I blended the above diagrams into a new diagram which was named Anticipatory Activity System.
The X-for-Y diagram is also a diagram blending too. If we consider the triangle diagram as a meta-diagram, then the X-for-Y meta-diagram is formed by two triangles. If a diagram is formed by two or more diagrams, then I claim that the process of creating the diagram is diagram blending.
The Value-fit framework is a special case of diagram blending. I used to blend different types of diagrams together. Now I realized that I can blend the same type of diagrams together. Also, this case should be labeled Symmetric Blending. You can find more details in the original article: D as Diagramming: The Value-fit Framework and Canvas.
7.7 The Ambiguity — Precision Dynamics
The “Ambiguity — Precision” Dynamics is inspired by the principle of Object-orientedness, which means any activity has its motive and goals which point to a final outcome. I consider the process of thought to be an activity that aims to transform ambiguous ideas into precise ideas.
Activity Theory doesn’t directly use terms such as Ambiguity and Precision to talk about thought. The “Ambiguity — Precision” Dynamics is based on my assumption that an intended activity of thinking about something tends to produce a definite conclusion. I think this assumption is useful for discussing the “Diagram — Thought” relation.
While I claim the tendency of transforming from ambiguity to precision, I found that reality is complicated because thinking is a hard activity. We may need to spend years to make sense of a diagram, Peter Senge has such a story. Psychotherapists. know it is so hard for ordinary people to talk about emotional problems and mental illnesses. So, Boisvert and Ahmed use diagrams to develop a new method called Visually Enhanced Therapy. In normal learning and thinking situations, we may misunderstand others’ diagrams. I’d like to share my own experience of Misdiagramming.
7.7.1 Peter Senge: How to make sense of a diagram
Peter Senge is one of my knowledge heroes in my early career. He is known as the author of the book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (1990). After publishing The Fifth Discipline, Senge hosted an annual conference about learning organizations each year. He shared a diagram below with his audiences at annual events for three years.
For the first year and the second year, Senge told his audiences that he has not figured it out yet. In the third year, Senge said that he understood it totally. In 1994, He edited and published The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook and wrote a long article about the above diagram (1994, p.15) The 32-page long article is titled Moving Forward: Thinking Strategically About Building Learning Organizations.
Senge doesn’t tell the story behind the diagram in the book. I saw the story in the introduction to the Chinese version of the book Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future (2004) which is co-authored by Peter Senge and others.
This is another story of the long-term development of thought with diagrams. The uniqueness of this story is that Senge made the diagram first and he spent years making sense of the diagram.
7.7.2 Visually Enhanced Therapy: Using Diagrams in Psychotherapy
Charles M. Boisvert and Mohiuddin Ahmed are experts in psychotherapy and mental health counseling. They are co-authors of a 2019 book Using Diagrams in Psychotherapy which introduces a brand new framework called Visually Enhanced Therapy.
According to Boisvert and Ahmed, “Visuals provide a structure that is not typically present in traditional verbal therapy. For example, using a white board or computer monitor to display the information in the session can quickly center the conversation and enable the verbal dialogue to stay more ‘theme-focused.’ The white board or computer monitor provides a sort of holding place for the information. This process of visualizing the verbal dialogue can reduce the chances of the therapist and client going astray in the sometimes random or idiosyncratic verbalizations of the client. The visuals also provide the therapist with a framework through which to structure the conversation and to minimize the impulse to sometimes ‘float around in the verbal world of the client.’ … We believe that this will help increase the chances of the client understanding and remembering the information discussed in therapy and ultimately benefiting more from the therapy dialogue.” (2019, p.7)
What Boisvert and Ahmed said is exactly what I said about Mediating Instruments. From the perspective of Activity Theory, Diagrams and Visuals in general are the mediators between therapists/clients and their communications. It also matches our “Self — Other — Diagram — Thought” framework. We can understand the Client as Self while the Therapist as Other.
In order to explain common mental problems and various therapy topics, they develop over 100 diagrams. The above Work Issues Timeline diagram is one of these diagrams. As explained by Boisvert and Ahmed, “You can use a timeline to track work-related events that may be causing your client stress or for which they may be required to seek counseling. You can use the timeline to track these events and to identify work stressors (e.g., people and situations) that have influenced your client’s behavior…The timeline can be effective in allowing your client to reflect on performance over time and to become more aware of the factors that have affected work performance. The therapist and client can then discuss coping strategies to minimize the future occurrence of the problematic behaviors and use the timeline to identify new behavioral responses to similar work challenges in the future.” (2019, pp.50–52)
Psychotherapy is a professional activity and diagrams are really useful mediating instruments for achieving the outcome of the activity.
7.7.3 Misdiagramming and Contaminated Mindware
The above two examples are about expressing thoughts with diagrams. A more complex case is about “Diagram — to — Diagram.” For example, a person adopts a knowledge framework with a diagram to explain his practical cases and develops a new framework with a new diagram. If the person doesn’t understand the original framework correctly, then he may make a wrong diagram. I call it Misdiagramming.
In April 2018, I reflected on an early project BagTheWeb which is a web content curation tool. I adopted the Activity System model and the idea of “mediated artifact” from Activity Theory to develop a framework for understanding the BagTheWeb project and the Curating activity in general.
The above diagram is the Activity System model which was developed by Finnish educational researcher and Activity Theorist Yrjö Engeström in 1987. A core idea behind the diagram is “mediation.” According to Kaptelinin and Nardi, “The concept of tools does not describe all types of technologies…Can the use of artifacts that are not tools be described as mediation? Currently activity theory is not quite clear on this issue. On the one hand, the notion of mediation in activity theory is clearly not limited to tools. For instance, the activity system model proposed by Engeström (1987) includes three types of mediators. Besides tools (mediating the relationship between the subject and the object) the model also describes rules (mediating the relationship between the subject and the community) and the division of labor (mediating the relationship between the community and the object). In principle, nothing prevents us from considering environments as mediators of human interaction with the world.” (2006, pp.255-256)
The notion of mediation in activity theory and the above diagram inspired me to reflect on the BagTheWeb project. BagTheWeb is a web content curation application that has been in operation since 2010. I am the chief information architect of the project. As a web curation tool, BagTheWeb lets users collect information pieces and store them in an “information container” — a bag, as we call it. Created by a user, a bag has a specific theme that is usually written in its title. A bag has five components including theme (title and description), bagged web content cards (weblinks and embedded content), original notes, related bags, and identity information (author, URL, image icon, created date, modified date, etc).
The above-left screenshot shows an early version of the UI design of Bag. I led a redesign project around 2012 and launched a new version in 2013. The new version allows users to write original notes (see the above-right screenshot) which supports the Markdown format.
While Bagged web content is bagged from the Web, original notes are bagged from the Mind. In order to build a model for describing the BagTheWeb project and the curating activity in general, I selected six elements: Actor, World, Mind, Web, Theme, and Bag.
The above-left diagram was modified from the above Activity System model diagram. The original six elements were replaced with Bag-related elements. I wrote an email to my co-workers who are team members of the BagTheWeb project. The sentences below are quoted from my original email:
- First, I add “theme” as the “mediated artifact” between “subject” and “object”.
- Second, I add “web” as the “mediated artifact” between “world” and “theme”.
- Third, I add “bag” as the “mediated artifact” between “actor” and “theme”.
- Fourth, I add “mind” as the middle element between “actor” and “world”. The “mind” is not a mediated artifact, but a channel for an actor to understand the world.
- Then, I built my own version of the Activity System diagram for BagTheWeb. This diagram uses the same visual format as the third-generation Activity Theory diagram which was developed by Yrjö Engeström in 1987, but my version’s content is different from Engestrom’s version.
- Check out this Slideshare to know more about the evolution of Activity Theory: https://www.slideshare.net/mpaskevi/activity-theory-presentation-tielab
Based on the diagram for BagTheWeb, I built a general version for all kinds of Curating Activities including talent curation, museum curation, and more. The key step is replacing Bag with Container while replacing Web with Network. See the above right diagram.
The final version created three pair concepts:
- Actor — World
- Container — Network
- Mind — Theme
Also, we can see two groups of elements:
- Personal side: Actor — Container — Mind
- Social side: World — Network — Theme
In this way, I built a model called Curating Activity System for discussing the Curating Activity in general by reflecting on my practice of BagTheWeb with theoretical resources from Activity Theory.
I told my coworkers, “Anyway, this is just an academic exercise, it is not related to business plan writing.” However, I found the Curating Activity System model has its business practical value in later 2018 when we work on a new project. I just use the model to inspire our product discovery. That was a fantastic experience for me. I realized that this is an example of organizational knowledge creation.
Though I was satisfied with the Curating Activity System model because I built abstract knowledge that can be used for different products, I realized that I was wrong in understanding the Activity System model and Activity Theory in general.
If you compare the Curating Activity System diagram with the original Activity System model diagram, you will find the same visual layout. But, my conceptualization is a totally different thing. My six elements don’t correspond to the Activity System model’s six elements. Moreover, I didn’t realize that I work on developing a model for individual curating activity, and the Activity System model is for studying collective activities.
Thus, I coined the term Misdiagramming to encourage myself to remember this mistake. Though the final result of the Curating Activity System is fine, the process indicated that I didn’t precisely understand the Activity System model and Activity Theory. I was tricked by my own visual preference because the visual layout is easy to adopt while the conceptual structure is hard to learn.
Why did I expand a personal mistake to a general issue? Because Misdiagramming can cause Contaminated Mindware.
The term Mindware was initially coined by the Harvard cognitive development psychologist David Perkins in the 1995 book Outsmarting IQ: The Emerging Science of Learnable Intelligence. Later, the cognitive scientist Keith E. Stanovich adopted the term for his books and his model of cognitive architecture. According to Stanovich, “The knowledge, rules, procedures, and strategies that can be retrieved and used to transform decoupled representations have been referred to as ‘mindware’…The mindware available for use during cognitive simulation is, in part, the product of past learning experiences.” (2016, p.34)
Stanovich and his co-workers developed a tripartite theory of mind (see the above diagram) which is different from the popular Type 1 v.s. Type 2 model of mind was introduced by Daniel Kahneman in his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow. The tripartite theory of mind suggests that there are two types of mind for Type 2 processing: Algorithmic mind (individual differences in fluid intelligence) and Reflective mind (individual differences in thinking dispositions or cognitive styles). According to Stanovich, “Many thinking dispositions concern beliefs, belief structure, and, importantly, attitudes toward forming and changing beliefs. Other thinking dispositions that have been identified concern a person’s goals and goal hierarchy.” (2016, p.25)
Stanovich points out that there are five types of reasoning errors (2016, p.49). One of these errors is Contaminated Mindware. The reason is very simple if we misunderstand some knowledge, rules, procedures, and strategies, this learned mindware is not original mindware. I told my coworkers that I was using Activity Theory to reflect on the BagTheWeb project. In fact, I was using the wrong version of Activity Theory which was built by myself. I didn’t correctly adopt both visualization and conceptualization behind the Activity System model. That means all my learned knowledge about Activity Theory was Contaminated Mindware for me at that time.
Barbara Tversky suggests the first low of cognition in her 2019 book Mind in Motion, “There are no benefits without cost.” If we don’t pay attention to Misdiagramming, then the learned wrong understanding will become our Contaminated Mindware which will cause our wrong reasoning and decisions.
7.8 Resources for Understanding Activity
The Activity conceptual space refers to activity, practice, and the materiality turn. You can find some articles I wrote last year (1, 2, 3). My reading scope is small, and you can find some books I read from the list below:
- Thought and Language (Lev Vygotsky, 1934/1986)
- Voices of the Mind: A Sociocultural Approach to Mediated Action (James V. Wertsch, 1991)
- Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary scientist (Fred Newman and Lois Holzman, 1993)
- Cultural Psychology (Michael Cole, 1996)
- Perspectives on Activity Theory (Engeström, Miettinen, and Punamaki, 1999)
- Strategy as Practice: An activity-based approach (Paula Jarzabkowski, 2005)
- Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design (Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie A. Nardi, 2006)
- An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity (Andy Blunden, 2010)
- Collaborative Projects: An Interdisciplinary Study (Andy Blunden, 2014)
- All Edge: Inside the New Workplace Networks (Clay Spinuzzi, 2015)
- Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social (Theodore R. Schatzki, 1996)
- The Dynamics of Social Practice (Elizabeth Shove, Mika Pantzar & Matt Watson, 2012)
- Practice Theory, Work, & Organization (Davide Nicolini, 2012)
- Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice (Golsorkhi, Rouleau, Seidl, and Vaara, 2010)
- How to conduct a practice-based study (Silvia Gherardi, 2013)
- Shifting Practices: Reflections on Technology, Practice, and Innovation (Giovan Francesco Lanzara, 2016)
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