D as Diagramming: An Integrated Framework for Studying Knowledge Diagrams (Part 4B)

Explore the conceptual space “Opportunity” and the perspective of “Ecological Situation”: Digital Space Affordances and the Opportunity of Objectification.

Photo by Stefan Lehner on Unsplash

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)
• Part 3B: Mediating Instrument (the Part — Whole Curativity, the Ambiguity — Precision dynamics)
• Part 4A: Ecological Situation (Physical Space Affordances and Graphic Space Affordances)

The last perspective is Ecological Situation which is generated from the Opportunity conceptual space. In this article, I will discuss Digital Space Affordances and the Opportunity of Objectification.

Contents

8.6 Digital Space Affordances

8.6.1 Miro v.s. Medium
8.6.2 Google Images and Knowledge Creator Brand
8.6.3 ResearchGate and Diagram Digitization

8.7 The Opportunity of Objectification

8.7.1 Turning a diagram into a symbol
8.7.2 Turning a diagram into a canvas
8.7.3 Turning a diagram into a digital application

8.8 The Opportunity Space

8.6 Digital Space Affordances

It’s a challenge to define the concept of Digital Space and it is harder to develop a general framework about Digital Space Affordances. I’d like to offer some relevant discussions about Digital Space and introduce my own work on Digital Space Affordances.

In 2019, Weiwei Hsu and Huge Dubberly published a paper titled Defining the Dimensions of the “Space” of Computing on JoDS (Journal of Design and Science). The authors adopt Space as a metaphor to discuss dimensions of Space from the perspective of computation. After reviewing the historical development of computing, they suggest six dimensions for understanding digital environments. According to the authors, “By examining the dimensions of the ‘space’ of computing, we can ‘locate’ or perhaps even ‘plot’ the ‘position’ of historic, incumbent, and proposed computing systems. Let’s revisit past computing paradigms and locate them in the ‘space’ of computing.”

The above diagram shows two examples: IBM System/360 (1964) and Amazon Echo (2014). You can find more details in the original article.

As mentioned in the previous article Part 4A, “Information Systems researchers and Social Media researchers tend to use the concept of Affordances at abstract high-level or concrete feature-oriented low-level. Tina Bucher and Anne Helmond made a great review of these situations in their paper The Affordances of Social Media Platform (2018). For example, danah boyd suggested four affordances: persistence, replicability, scalability, and searchability at the high level for social network sites (2011).”

The above Dimensions of Space framework is really useful for discussing such as high-level abstract Affordances of digital environments.

My own approach starts with a screen, not a metaphor. Originally, Digital Space Affordance (DSA) is the third sub-project of the Once Upon A Whiteboard project which is about digital whiteboard platforms and related practices. The screenshot below is a rough framework for classifying Digital Spaces.

The above screenshot shows a matrix that is defined with two dimensions

• Physical v.s. Virtual
• Individual v.s. Collaborative

Since the object of Once Upon A Whiteboard is a Virtual Whiteboard, I focus on Wall, Screen, Board, and similar Spaces. You can see some examples from the matrix:

• Physical Wall
• Physical Window Glass
• Physical Whiteboard
• Desktop Background
• Large Digital Screen: Mirror (a smart large mirror for fitness in the home)
• Augmented Physical Wall
• Virtual Whiteboard: Miro (the online whiteboard for easy collaboration)
• Recording Background: Loom Canvas (customizable backdrop)
• Shared Screen

In fact, there is a hidden dimension behind the above examples: the process dimension. For example, Recording Background and Shared Screen refer to different steps of activities.

Eventually, I realized that it is better to define Digital Space as a three dimension concept: Time+Space+Social. This notion echoes the ecological psychologist Roger Bark’s Behavior Settings theory. You can find more details about Behavior Settings in a previous article.

For the present discussion, I’d like to focus on the Digital Space Affordances of webpages. Let’s start with a simple question:

If we put a diagram or many diagrams on a webpage, what can we do with these diagrams and the webpage?

This is a practical way of studying Digital Space Affordances and Diagramming. The discussion below offers three examples.

8.6.1 Miro v.s. Medium

On June 11, I created a draft with several diagrams and some “monkey-type” texts for placeholders on Medium. However, I stopped writing on Medium and moved to Miro.

The outcome is an idea board: Curativity Theory for Personal Innovation.

Check out the Medium draft: Career API Canvas (This Draft is for Testing “Digital Space Affordances”).

It’s clear that I was Thinking, not Writing. Miro’s board is better for supporting my Diagramming as Thinking work than Medium’s editor.

Both Miro and Medium offer a blank space for creators. However, they are designed for different purposes. Miro is for creating diagrams and visual collaborations while Medium is for online writing. Though Medium allows users to insert images into a post, it doesn’t offer a free digital space for creators.

8.6.2 Google Images and Knowledge Creator Brand

One of my favorite tools for studying knowledge diagrams is Google Images. Last year, I wrote an article titled Activity U (IV): The Engeström’s Triangle and the Power of Diagram. The major source of my writing is a search result page on Google Images.

An insight behind the search experience is that I can research Knowledge Creator Brand through Google Images. You can try searching the following names:

• Edward Tufte: You will find Charles Joseph Minard’s Carte Figurative.
• Konrad Lorenz: You will see greylag geese.
• Peter Morville: There is a honeycomb.

I define the Knowledge Creator Brand as a system that is formed by three elements: Creators’ Name, Knowledge Concepts, and Visual Identity. Since the Creators’ Names and Knowledge Concepts are text, we can search these texts on Google Images and find related Visual Identity.

What’s the relationship between Diagrams and Knowledge Creator Brand? Since diagrams represent knowledge frameworks and models, diagrams are a typical visual identity of Knowledge Creators’ Brands.

8.6.3 ResearchGate and Diagram Digitization

ResearchGate is a website allowing scholars to share their academic papers and make friends. It is a social media platform for academic knowledge creators and readers. The basic unit of the platform is a research paper.

In the physical world, research papers are published in academic journals. In the digital world, there are at least three types of environments for displaying research papers online.

• Publisher-centered PDF Space: Make a PDF file for a research paper, then put it on a website of an academic journal which is owned by an academic publisher. For example, Human Studies is a journal for philosophy and the social sciences and it is one of 2, 900 journals published by Springer.
• Author-centered PDF Space: Make a PDF file for a research paper, then the author of the paper uploads it to a social media platform such as ResearchGate.net and Academia.edu
• Independent Non-PDF Space: Publish the content of a research paper on a webpage in an independent journal. For example, JoDS (Journal of Design and Science) is published with an open-source platform PubPub.

This topic is about the digitalization of academic knowledge activity. For the present discussion, I’d like to focus on Diagram Digitization which is a sub-topic of Knowledge Digitalization. For traditional PDF format research papers, diagrams are embedded in the content.

If you are designing an online platform for sharing research papers. You have two choices for displaying diagrams:

• The Attach approach: just make a PDF file for a research paper, don’t consider diagrams as independent objects.
• The Detach approach: while making a PDF file for a research paper, you can consider diagrams as independent objects and design special spaces to display diagrams.

ResearchGate.net chooses the Detach approach to design its information architecture.

The above-left picture is a simple version (without ads) of a webpage of ResearchGate. The top part of the webpage displays the title, authors, call-for-action buttons, and meta-data of a paper. The primary call-for-action is Download full-text PDF while the secondary call-for-action is Read full-text (online). The main part of the webpage is Abstract and Figures.

The above right picture shows a webpage for displaying a figure in a large size. Visitors can download the figure, explore other figures, and return to the source publication.

Why does ResearchGate make this design decision? What’s the benefit of the Detach approach? We can find some ideas from the above section: Google Images and Knowledge Creator Brand. Both the Attach approach and the Detach approach are searched and indexed by image search engines, but the Detach approach offers more affordances for users, such as downloading an independent diagram. The Detach approach also offers more affordances for owners of platforms because they have more spaces for displaying ads.

p.s. I searched “Alfred Schutz Diagram” for my reading about Schutz’s ideas. You can try the same technique for learning theories. Just type the name of a theorist and the word Diagram in Google Images.

8.7 The Opportunity of Objectification

As mentioned in Part 4A, the diagram is in books, papers, walls, whiteboards, floors, napkins, slides, canvases, tweets, blog posts, digital boards, etc. The “Ecological Situation” perspective aims to study opportunities behind these situations.

There is a basic principle for thinking about opportunities in diagramming: the Objectification principle. It is inspired by Project-oriented Activity Theory.

In Jan 2021, I worked on a book titled Project-oriented Activity Theory which introduces Andy Blunden’s Project-oriented theoretical approach of Activity. In order to develop the theoretical foundation of “Project as a unit of Activity”, Blunden adopts Hegel’s Logic and Vygotsky’s theory about Concept as theoretical resources. The process is documented in three books: An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity (2010), Concepts: A Critical Approach (2012), and Collaborative Projects: An Interdisciplinary Study (2014).

The Project-oriented theoretical approach to Activity considers an Activity as a Project of the Formation of a Concept. It suggests that there are three phases of the formation of a concept: Phase 1: Initialization; Phase 2: Objectification; Phase 3: Institutionalization. Blunden clearly claims that there are three aspects of objectification of a concept: symbolic, instrumental, and practical. I designed the diagram below to represent these ideas.

Can we adopt the same framework for the Objectification of Diagrams? If we consider both Concepts and Diagrams as products of thought, then we can expand the applicational scope of the Objectification of Concept to Diagrams. Since my focus is knowledge diagrams which represent a set of concepts, it is reasonable for me to use the framework.

I have discussed details of the Objectification of Concept, you can find more details in Activity U (VIIII): Project-oriented Activity Theory.

Also, I’d like to suggest three specific ways to discover the opportunity behind the objectification of diagrams.

• Symbolization: turning a diagram into a symbol
• Canvasization: turning a diagram into a canvas
• Digitalization: turning a diagram into a digital application

8.7.1 Turning a diagram into a symbol

In Part 2, we have discussed Cultural Significance and Symbolic Invention. If you want to make a symbol, you can focus on the visual aspect of a diagram. For example, the picture below is an example of the Symbolization of Diagram.

If you read my previous articles, you may have noticed that the diagram in the above picture is the basic frame of the WXMY diagram, the HERO U framework, the ECHO way, etc. Eventually, I just made a symbol for these ideas since they share the same visual aspect of a three-container layout.

8.7.2 Turning a diagram into a canvas

In Part 3A, I introduced the Means—End Spectrum in which we can see diagrams and canvases together. Based on the spectrum of the ontological position of diagrams, I identify six types of diagrams: Inspiration, Canvas, Map, Skeleton, Notation, and Framework. The most weak position is Inspiration which refers to drafts, sketches, private notes, etc. The strong position is Framework which refers to formal knowledge models.

If we have a knowledge diagram/framework, then it is possible to turn it into a canvas. In Oct, I made two canvases based on my two diagrams. From these two experiments, I learned a basic principle of design canvas:

A good canvas matches visual areas and conceptual spaces with a simple and unique style of spatial configuration.

This principle leads to four rules:

• Rule 1: Separate several visual areas clearly with lines. Make sure each visual area is identified easily.
• Rule 2: Adopt a special and unique perspective to develop conceptualized knowledge for building conceptual spaces. The more unique the perspective, the greater the value of the canvas.
• Rule 3: Make sure the layout of visual areas matches the structure of conceptual spaces. Take the visualization radically.
• Rule 4: Develop a simple and unique visual style that represents a spatial configuration. The uniqueness is the starting point of a knowledge brand.

After testing these rules with two cases, I realized that there are two types of diagrams, one has clear visual areas, another one doesn’t care about visual areas. You can find more details from previous articles: D as Diagramming: The Creative Work Canvas, and D as Diagramming: The Value-fit Framework and Canvas.

8.7.3 Turning a diagram into a digital application

Diagrams and Canvases are thinking tools for some social practices. Thus, it is possible to develop digital applications based on diagrams and canvases since these thinking tools are the objectification of thought and knowledge.

I have introduced the Product Field canvas as an example in Part 3B and Part 4A. I’d like to use it as an example again. This time, we are going to learn Field.so which is the digital version of Product Field.

Source: a screenshot of Field.so

Field is a web-based software-as-a-service application. According to the developers, “Field grew out of Product Field. Product Field is the world’s first framework for product-centric innovation and organizational development and was developed by the founders of Field.”

A basic unit of interaction of Field is adding notes as cues to the Product Field canvas in a digital space. This interaction turns physical note-taking processes into human-computer interactions. The rest of the app is all about sorting digital notes, running specific product discovery activities (such as Flows and Sessions ), browsing notes in order to explore insights, and presenting product development proposals, etc.

Also, digitalization is not only about developing web applications. It could be developing templates too. Since the rise of digital whiteboard platforms such as Miro, Mural, Lucidspark, etc, creators could launch their digital templates in digital spaces.

In other words, there are two approaches to Digitalization of Diagrams: the strong Platform Independence approach, and the weak Platform Independence approach. As mentioned in 4A, the concept of Opportunity refers to the Potentials — Capabilities coupling. Your situation determines your choice.

8.8 The Opportunity Space

The further action after objectification is productization. While objectification is about ecological opportunities, productization is about business opportunities. Thus, the following discussion will combine the Ecological Situation perspective and the Business Market perspective together.

I designed a new canvas for discussing the productization of diagrams. See the picture below.

The above canvas is designed with two spaces and four directions. The two spaces are Physical Space and Digital Space. The four directions are Content, Community, Tool, and Service.

I placed “Diagram” in the center of the canvas. As mentioned before, I used the term Diagrams interchangeably with Knowledge Frameworks. Thus, the Opportunity Space is about the productization of knowledge frameworks too.

Since “Content”, “Community”, “Tool”, and “Service” are normal words. I think I don’t have to explain the canvas with real examples. I’d like to leave this as a challenge for readers.

8.9 Resources for Understanding Opportunity

The Opportunity conceptual space refers to environments, situations, and the potentials — capabilities coupling. This is a broad space for learning and exploring. The present discussion focuses on ecological opportunity which is inspired by Ecological Psychology and Affordance Theory in particular.

I’d like to claim that I have read some most important books about Ecological Psychology and Affordance Theory and many related papers. The below list is print books only, and they are about academic discussions. If you don’t like reading academic books, you can skip this list and jump to the next list.

• The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (James J. Gibson, 1979)
• An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development (Eleanor J. Gibson and Anne D. Pick, 2000)
• James J. Gibson and the Psychology of Perception (Edward S. Reed, 1988)
• Perceiving the Affordances: A Portrait of Two Psychologists (Eleanor J. Gibson, 2002)
• Encountering the World: Toward an Ecological Psychology (Edward S. Reed, 1996)
• The Perceived Self: Ecological and Interpersonal Sources of Self-knowledge (edited by Ulric Neisser, 1993)
• Cognition and Reality: Principles and Implications of Cognitive Psychology (Ulric Neisser, 1976)
• Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James’s Radical Empiricism (Harry Heft, 2001)
• Behavior Settings: A Revision and Extension of Roger Barker’s ‘Ecological Psychology’ (Phil Schoggen, 1989)
• Perception as Information Detection: Reflections on Gibson’s Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (edited by Jeffrey B. Wagman and Julia J.C. Blau, 2020)

Initially coined by Gibson, the term Affordance has been adopted by scholars from various domains such as psychology, human factors, design, communication, sociology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, etc. The renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett (2017) even suggested that “Affordances” should be more widely known by the general public.

I have read over 500 academic papers about various applications of the concept of Affordance. Also, I found there are several books that are inspired by the concept of Affordance. The list below is for readers who don’t want to read academic books and papers.

• The Design of Everyday Things (Don Norman, 1988/2013)
• The Myth of the Paperless Office (Abigail J. Sellen and Richard H.R. Harper, 2002)
• Affordance Based Design: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Applications (Jonathan Maier, 2011)
• Understanding Context: Environment, Language, and Information Architecture (Andrew Hinton, 2014)
• Shikake: The Japanese Art of Shaping Behavior Through Design (Naohiro Matsumura, 2016)
• How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things (Jenny L. Davis, 2020)

If you can read Chinese, I’d like to recommend my mentor’s two books:

• 《心理套娃：一种新型投射测量和咨询工具》 程乐华/卢嘉辉，2011
• 《感性理性系统分化说：情理关系的重构》程乐华，2021

As mentioned before, I use the conceptual space of Opportunity to curate Affordances, Opportunity, Possible Actions, Possible Practices into one big container. My own theoretical work the Ecological Practice approach is inspired by ecological psychology, but I also developed its own theoretical concepts such as Attachance, Supportance, Curativity, Infoniche, Lifeway/Lifeform/Lifesystem, etc. These ideas are presented in the following books and some articles:

• Curativity: The Ecological Approach to General Curation Practice (2018–2019, Chinese, 615 pages)
• After Affordance: The Ecological Approach to Human Action (2020, Chinese, 371 pages)
• Platform for Development: The Ecology of Adult Development in the 21st Century (2020–2021, English, Table of Contents)
• Themes of Practice: The Information Architecture of Social Life (2019–2021, Chinese, 440 pages, Introduction)
• Career Curation: Curativity Theory for Personal Innovation (2021, Introduction)
• Possible Practices: Attach, Detach, and Opportunities (2022, Introduction 1, 2)

The Ecological Practice Approach is a large knowledge enterprise. I use a simple approach to manage the project. Each year I write a book and each book introduces one theoretical concept or one framework.

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