Projectivity as Cultural Attachance

Connect the Project Engagement approach and the Ecological Practice approach

In 2021, I wrote a book (draft) titled Project-oriented Activity Theory which introduces Andy Blunden’s new approach to Activity Theory. The second part of the book was called Project Engagement (v1.0) and it introduced the following ideas:

• The Developmental Project Model
• The Concept of Projectivity / The Cultural Projection Analysis Model
• The Zone of Project Framework

The Concept of Projectivity leads to the Cultural Projection Analysis Model, so they belong to one framework.

I designed different diagrams for the above three ideas.

Several days ago, I made the above diagram that connects the concept of “Projectivity” and the Developmental Project Model together. It inspired me to reflect on the concept of “Projectivity”.

From the perspective of the Ecological Practice Approach, the concept of “Projectivity” can be understood as a sub-concept of “Attachance”. In The Ecological Practice Design Toolkit (V2, 2023), I directly claimed that “the concept of Projectivity is an application of the concept of Attachance.”

Since I used Cultural Projection Analysis for the Project Engagement approach, I decided to use “Cultural Attachance” to connect “Projectivity” and “Attachance”.

This article will review the development of the idea of “Projectivity as Cultural Attachance”.

Contents

Part 1: THEORY

1.1 The Concept of Attachance (2020)
1.2 Projectivity and Cultural Projection Analysis (2021)
1.3 Knowledge Discovery Canvas (Jan 2022)
1.4 Life as A Project Chain (Feb 2022, June 2022)
1.5 The Lifeflow: “Attach/Enter — Detach/Exit” (May 2023)
1.6 Kinds of Project Engagement and Attachance (Nov 2022)
1.7 Creative Projectivity (July 2023)
1.8 Developmental Project Model + Projectivity (Oct 2023)

Part 2 PRACTICE

2.1 Life, Projects, and Events: The Biography of Yrjö Engeström (Nov 2020)
2.2 Developmental Project Case Study: The Activity U Project (June 2021)
2.3 Project I and The ECHO Way (May 2021, Feb 2022)
2.4 Modeling A Developmental Project for Life Transitions (March 2022)
2.5 Three Life Discovery Projects (Jan 2022 to June 2022)
2.6 Mapping Thematic Journey (Sept 2022)
2.7 Once Upon A Whiteboard Project (Oct 2022)
2.8 Appropriating Activity Theory (Dec 2022)
2.9 How did I develop the “Product Engagement” Framework? (March 2023)
2.10 The Mental Moves Knowledge Project (March 2023)
2.11 Mental Models and Project (June 2023)
2.12 The ECHO Trip (July 2023)
2.13 The Microdynamics of Creative Identity (Sept 2023)

Part 3 Discussion

Part 1: THEORY

Part 1 focuses on theoretical concepts and frameworks about “Attachance”, “Projectivity”, “Project Engagement”, and “Developmental Project Model”.

1.1 The Concept of Attachance (2020)

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.

Affordance means potential action opportunities offered by environments. I want to highlight the meaning and value of actual action itself, however, the term Affordance only refers to potential actions. Thus, I coined the term Attachance to emphasize the potential opportunities offered by actual actions, especially the attaching act and the detaching act.

The term Attachance was inspired by Gibson’s writing about the relationship between people and environment, “When in use, a tool is a sort of extension of the hand, almost an attachment to it or a part of the user’s own body, and thus is no longer a part of the environment, graspable and portable, to be sure, but nevertheless external to the observer. This capacity to attach something to the body suggests that the boundary between the animal and the environment is not fixed at the surface of the skin but can shift. More generally it suggests that the absolute duality of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ is false. When we consider the affordances of things, we escape this philosophical dichotomy (1979, p.35)”

Gibson’s idea is not alone. The classic example of the blind man’s stick (Merleau-Ponty 1962; Polanyi 1962; Bateson 1973) described the same viewpoint. Gregory Bateson asked the below question in 1973: “Consider a blind man with a stick. Where does the blind man’s self begin? At the tip of the stick? At the handle of the stick? Or at some point halfway up the stick?” Merleau-Ponty, Bateson, and Gibson, seeded a great tree about the human mind. Today we see their ideas are driving the emergent embodied cognitive science.

Gibson didn’t develop a theory about “attach” and “detach.” He used terms such as “attached object” and “detached object.” For Gibson, an attached object refers to a layout of surfaces less than completely surrounded by the medium, and a detached object refers to a layout of surfaces completely surrounded by the medium. This piece is complex because Gibson used his own terms such as Medium, Substance, and Surfaces to describe the meaningful environment.

Gibson focused on the human body and environment, he considered objects and tools as environments too. His theory is body scale analysis. The Attachance concept I am working on goes beyond the body, I want to expand it to multi-level scales.

In 2019, I started working on my own theoretical account of the Ecological Practice approach after finishing a book (draft) titled Curativity. The 2019 version of the approach is a curated toolkit version. The concept of Attachance is part of the toolkit. In May 2020, I wrote a book (draft) titled After Affordance: The Ecological Approach to Human Action in which I proposed several new theoretical ideas for expanding ecological psychology to the modern digital environment. The primary theme of After Affordance is the concept of Attachance.

The concept of Attachance is planned to develop as 1) an ecological practice concept for practice studies such as interaction design and startup innovation, and 2) a philosophical concept for developing a social theory.

The book After Affordance only achieves the first goal and it focuses on the following acts:

• Attaching to an environment
• Detaching from an environment
• Attaching to an object
• Detaching from an object

I use the concept of Attachance in many ways.

• The Attachance Perspective refers to its philosophical meaning. You can find more details in D as Diagramming: The Attachance Perspective.
• The theoretical concept of “Attachance” for the Ecological Practice Approach. It refers to what I explored in the 2020 book After Affordance. For example, I used it and Affordance together for discussing creative actions. You can find more details in Creative Actions: Second-order Affordance and Attachance.
• The word “Attachance” is for informal discussions. I often discuss some stories or topics from the perspective of Attachance. You can find an example in Possible Practices: Attach, Detach, and Opportunities.

The 2020 book (draft) After Affordance introduces the following germ cell model for the Ecological Practice Approach:

The above diagram combines three core concepts of the Ecological Practice approach together: Affordance, Attachance, and Containance. The term “Offers” is an affordance-inspired concept, it refers to opportunities afforded by the Container. The group of “Offer — Act” forms “Event” which changes the status of the Container. The new status of the Container affords new opportunities which guide new acts and events.

The above diagram also represents the concept of Attachance at the level of Container. We can consider Entering the Container as an Attaching act and Exiting the Container as a Detaching act. However, the diagram doesn’t represent the second attachance which is inside the Container. In fact, the Ecological Practice approach considers the “Form of Act” as “Attach” or “Detach”. Any act is either an attaching act or a detaching act.

The above picture is another way of representing the germ cell of the Ecological Practice approach. The two forms of acts are represented by binary numbers. The 0 represents detaching act and the 1 represents attaching act. The parenthesis represents the Container. The right diagram shows an example of complex status which brings out other two concepts: Curativity and Themes of Practice. I also add the concept of Emergence from complexity theory to the above diagram.

You can find more details in The Attachance Perspective, The Development of Ecological Practice Approach, and The Concept of Attachance (A list of articles).

1.2 Projectivity and Cultural Projection Analysis (2021)

In 2021, I started working on the journey of engaging with Activity Theory.

On Jan 9, 2021, I published an article titled Activity U (X): Projecting, Projectivity, and Cultural Projection which introduces the concept of Projectivity and the notion of Cultural Projection. This article is an essential part of my 2021 book (draft) Project-oriented Activity Theory.

What’s Projectivity? It refers to potential action opportunities of forming or participating in a project for people to actualize their development with others.

The Concept of “Projectivity” is inspired by Ecological Psychologist James J. Gibson’s Affordance Theory and Andy Blunden’s Project-oriented Activity Theory. The chart below presents three similar concepts: Affordance, Supportance, and Projectivity. Both three concepts share the same deep structure: the Reciprocal Relationship between Environment and Organism. For the Platform-for-Development framework, we can consider Platform as Environment. For Project-oriented Activity Theory, we can consider Project as Environment.

The concept of Projectivity connects Project, Projecting, and Projection together. Based on the concept, I developed the Cultural Projection Analysis method.

First, there is a social/cultural environment that contains Events. By perceiving and knowing Events, people recognize the Primary Projectivity which is offered by the social/cultural environments, and initiate a Project. For the Primary Projectivity, its sense-maker is Events.

Once a project is initiated, it offers Secondary Projectivity for others to recognize the potential action opportunities of participating in the project. For the Second Projectivity, its sense-maker is the Identity of an established Project.

Third, the participants of a project could perceive and know the Tertiary Projectivity and initiate a new project that is inspired by the project. For Tertiary Projectivity, its sense-maker is the Themes and Identity of an established Project.

The concept of Projectivity connects Project, Projecting, and Projection together. and can be used to service the Platform-for-Development framework as a foundation for the module on Cultural Projection Analysis.

You can find more details in Activity U (X): Projecting, Projectivity, and Cultural Projection (26 min read) and Project Engagement (v2): Life, History, and Multiverse (16 min read).

1.3 Knowledge Discovery Canvas (Jan 2022)

In Jan 2022, I worked on developing the Knowledge Discovery Canvas. I realized that “Projectivity” is just a sub-concept of “Attachance”.

The above diagram is the Knowledge Discovery Canvas. The form of the canvas is a matrix. There are other two dimensions:

• The Enter—Exit dimension
• The Individual — Collective dimension

The Enter — Exit dimension is inspired by my work on the Ecological Practice approach which highlights the concept of Container. As mentioned above, the thematic space is a super cognitive container. The Enter—Exit dimension describes the whole process of interaction with the container.

For the Knowledge Curation project, the Enter is related to Resources, and the Exit is related to Results. That means we consider two types of resources for Developing Tacit Knowledge: Theory and Practice. There are two types of Results for Developing Tacit Knowledge: End and Means. The End refers to “Knowing for All” while the Means refers to “Knowing for Me”.

The “Knowing for All” and “Knowing for Me” are two types of motivations, the former is developing knowledge for public benefit while the latter is developing knowledge for personal practice. This leads to the second dimension: Individual — Collective.

The Individual — Collective dimension is inspired by Activity Theory and other social practice theories. I personally consider them as knowledge resources for my “Activity” thematic space. The major notion behind these theoretical approaches is that they consider individual actions within a social practice context or a human activity. For Developing Tacit Knowledge, I also consider personal actions and social context. This is the reason that I don’t use the term “Personal Knowledge Development”.

The above canvas also has two nested squares which divide the thematic space into two sub-spaces: inner space and outer space. We can adopt the metaphor of City to understand these two sub-spaces. While a city is a whole, we can clearly identify its inner space and its outer space. For Developing Tacit Knowledge, the inner space is all about personal knowing activities while the outer space is related to social interactions.

The original name of the Knowledge Discovery Canvas was Thematic Space Canvas. You can find more details in The Notion of Thematic Spaces (Jan 5, 2022).

1.4 Life as A Project Chain (Feb 2022, June 2022)

In Feb 2022, I worked on the Life-as-Project approach which applies the Project Engagement Approach to Life Discovery Activity.

I have developed several frameworks about Life Discovery and Life Development in general from different perspectives. One challenge is making a balance between individual perspective and collective perspective. In fact, this is an essential challenge for social sciences. For example, psychological perspective v.s. the sociological perspective, methodological individualism v.s. methodological collectivism, etc.

Some scholars don’t consider the dichotomy as a problem and they just form two camps. Other scholars developed theoretical solutions to solve the theoretical conflict between these two camps. Inspired by Derek Layder’s Social Domains Theory (1997) and Andy Blunden’s “Project as a Unit of Activity” (2010, 2014), I adopted the concept of “Project” as a Container for understanding Life.

Andy Blunden mentions a project-oriented approach is both about psychology and sociology, “A project is a focus for an individual’s motivation, the indispensable vehicle for the exercise of their will and thus the key determinant of their psychology and the process which produces and reproduces the social fabric. Projects, therefore, give direct expression to the identity of the sciences of the mind and the social sciences. Projects belong to both; a project is a concept of both psychology and sociology.” (2014, p.15)

The concept of Life can be understood as Collective Life and Individual Life. We can use the concept of Project to understand both of them. A person’s real life is a set of real actions. The concept of Project is a way of curating these actions. On the other hand, Collective Life can be curated with Projects too.

On April 14, 2022, I sent an email to a theoretical sociologist after I received a recommendation from Academia. We had an email conversion in the following ten days.

I started re-reading his books, papers, and articles. He developed a meta-theory of theoretical sociology and wrote three books and many academic papers in over 10 years. We exchanged ideas on a mobile message app and shared files through emails.

He encourages me to explore the pair of concepts of “Event — Project” further. I also learned “a mechanism of unfolding” from his meta-theory of theoretical sociology. He doesn’t use the term “a mechanism of unfolding” in his book, but he uses the pair of concepts of “synchronic — diachronic” which is adopted from Ferdinand de Saussure to describe the transformation from micro-immediate situated activities to macro-social structures.

Following his approach, I used “synchronic mapping” to describe the immediate “Event — Project” match. I also used “diachronic unfolding” to describe the development of a chain of Projects and a chain of Events.

In June 2022, I made the above diagram to represent the idea of “Project — Event”. You can find more details in Project Engagement (v2): Life, History, and Multiverse.

While Life is the outcome of the diachronic unfolding of the chain of projects, history is the outcome of the diachronic unfolding of the chain of events.

1.5 The Lifeflow: “Attach/Enter — Detach/Exit” (May 2023)

I also used the pair of concepts “Resouce — Result” for the Lifesystem Framework (2020). See the diagram below.

It was built on the following basic model which is called “Life Coordinate”:

The horizontal axis refers to “Attach/Enter — Detach/Exit” which is inspired by the Ecological Practice approach’s basic model.

In May 2023, I made a new version of Life Coordinate:

I use the basic model of the Ecological Practice approach for the Horizontal Tendency.

If we repeat the above basic model, we see a Lifeflow which is the short name of a metaphor “Life as a continuous flow”.

I use “continuous flow” as a metaphor to describe Life and Experience. This metaphor is inspired by William James’ metaphor “Stream of Thought”.

James used a group of metaphors around the notion of “Stream of Thought”. According to Jeffrey V. Osowski, the following other metaphors or images were part of the stream family (1989, p.132): train, chain, path, current (both water and electric), channel, line (with segments), procession, kaleidoscope, and fabric. “By using these metaphors, James was able to capture the concepts of continuity, constant change, direction, connectedness, pace, rhythm, and flow, all of which were important characteristics of thought or consciousness.”

James used the stream metaphor to reject the British empiricists’ view of consciousness which refers to the chain or train metaphor. According to James:

“Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as “chain” or “train” do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness or of subjective life. (vol. 1, p.239)

What James emphasized is the Subjective Life. I follow this metaphor and directly use Life as a continuous flow to describe a person’s subjective experience of his own life. You can’t use a knife to cut a stream, you only can use a container to contain it.

The water doesn’t have a form which also means a structure, but the container has a form. The form of our experience is perceived as an interaction between our immediate actions with ecological situations which refers to physical environments and social environments. Since a container has its boundary, then we have experience of Enter and Exit. If we consider Life as a large container as a whole, Enter refers to Birth and Exit refers to Death. We can also consider Birth as a small life event, its primary life container is the Womb. Death, its primary life container is the Tomb.

The concept of Container is adopted from George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s conceptual metaphor Container and image schema Containment. However, I expanded the concept from a metaphor to a theoretical concept for the Ecological Practice approach. I use “Attach” and “Detach” to describe these experiences and other meanings.

For life development, what I want to claim is the meaning of “Attach something to containers” and “Detach something from containers”. This is not part of the conceptual metaphor Container and image schema Containment.

By expanding to “Attach something to containers” and “Detach something from containers”, we can talk about something. In this way, Life is not only a purely spiritual journey but a social material activity too. In other words, mind and matter are not separable.

1.6 Kinds of Project Engagement and Attachance (Nov 2022)

In Nov 2022, I reflected on the Developmental Project Model and I found several types of “Project Engagement”. See the diagram below.

This is a significant insight because it indicates that the original diagram of the Developmental Project model only represents one type of “Project Engagement”.

The new diagram network represents seven types of relationships between two triangles. I use the following seven verbs to describe a typology.

• Contain: the green triangle is contained by the blue triangle
• Support: the green triangle is supported by the blue triangle
• Touch: the blue triangle is touched by the green triangle
• Oppose: the green triangle opposes the blue triangle
• Combine: the two triangles use the same color
• Deviate: the two triangles are in different directions
• Group: the two triangles are grouped together

Second, let’s move to the abstract level which refers to conceptual meanings. Since we are talking about Developmental Projects, we can use the green triangle to refer to a person’s life projects, and the blue triangle can refer to social contexts.

I use the following seven nouns to describe a new typology:

• Cultivation: the person’s life project is small and weak, it needs the social context to cultivate it. It looks like a baby and a mom.
• Acceleration: the person’s life project is big, and the social context offers more resources to support its development. It looks like a startup and its inventor.
• Reference: the person’s life project doesn’t have a strong link with the social context. However, the social context can be a reference to the project. For example, I don’t have a direct interpersonal relationship with Robert Kegan who is an American developmental psychologist. I only read his books and papers.
• Confliction: there are tensions or contradictions between the person’s life project and the social context. For example, a person doesn’t like his job.
• Integration: the person’s life project and the social context are perceived as a meaningful whole and there is no contradiction between them. For example, a startup’s founder and the startup.
• Departure: the person’s life project and the social context move in different directions. For example, while a founder loves his startup, the investors require the startup to move in a new direction which is not accepted by the founder.
• Interdependence: the person’s life project and the social context work in the same direction and share the same goals. They need each other in order to achieve a big enterprise.

This is just a heuristic tool. However, it leads to a new perspective on “Project Engagement” and “Projectivity”.

I adopted the concept of “Thematic Space” to view these seven types of Developmental Projects. Each type of Developmental Project can be seen as a Thematic Space.

And we can find many moves between different types of developmental projects.

We should notice that there are two types of moves:

• Move between two Developmental Projects that belong to the same type.
• Move between two Developmental Projects that belong to two different types.

Both moves bring new Attachances to us. Some Attachances are negative while others are positive.

To perceive Attachanes is to perceive moving between thematic spaces. For the Life-as-Project approach, we need to pay attention to both changes in Projects and Types of Projects.

You can find more details in Life Strategy: Kinds of Project Engagement.

1.7 Creative Projectivity (July 2023)

From March 2023 to July 2023, I worked on the Mental Moves knowledge project.

My original goal was to collect more examples about “Moving between Thematic Spaces” and edit a book as an archive. Later, I started working on case studies one by one.

The project aims to establish the Attachance Approach to Ecological Creative Cognition through case studies. I started with Dean Keith Simonton’s Chance-configuration theory (Scientific Genius,1988), especially the concept of Mental Elements, and expanded my view to consider the ecological meaning and value of detaching acts and attaching acts. The outcome is a systematic framework and a set of tools for further study.

Ecological Creative Cognition highlights a new perspective to creative thinking: moving from head to head-body-environment. In this way, the Mental Moves project also contributes to the Context (Mind) project which refers to the Ecological Practice approach to Mind.

On July 31, 2023, I edited a three-volume book (draft) titled Mental Moves: The Attachance Approach to Ecological Creative Cognition. Volume 1 aims to offer the Attachance Approach to Ecological Creative Cognition by collecting articles about cast studies. It is divided into the following six parts:

• Part 1: Mental Elements
• Part 2: Mental Focus
• Part 3: Mental Models
• Part 4: Creative Projectivity
• Part 5: Multiple Moves
• Part 6: Significant Insights

What’s the content of Part 4? See the attached screenshot:

Originally, I didn’t use the concept of Projectivity for the Mental Moves project. Eventually, I realized that the concept of Projectivity is a concrete application of the concept of Attachance: the “Join — Project — Leave” Attachance.

Part 4 collected articles about the project-related Attachances. Though these case studies go beyond the original definition of Projectivity, I used Creative Projectivity to name Part 4.

I used the following three-level hierarchy of knowledge centers for the Mental Moves project.

The Project Engagement approach uses “Project” as the unit of analysis of Activity. If we see a knowledge center as a Project, then knowledge projects can be seen as sub-projects.

1.8 Developmental Project Model + Projectivity (Oct 2023)

In Oct 2023, I worked on discovering the thematic spaces of the Developmental Project Model. You can find more details in The D.I.V.E. Framework for Knowledge Projects.

On Oct 27, 2203, I added a circle to the original Developmental Project Model.

This new diagram brings two new thematic spaces to the Developmental Project Model.

• Enter with Opportunities
• Exit with Achievements

Now we can use these two thematic spaces to curate more related ideas into the Project Engagement approach.

Enter with Opportunities

- Explore the conceptual space “Opportunity”

Link 1: An Integrated Framework for Studying Knowledge Diagrams (Part 4A)
Link 2: An Integrated Framework for Studying Knowledge Diagrams (Part 4B)

Exit with Achievements

- The Achievement Chain
Link 1: Product, By-product, and Meta-product
Link 2: The “Result — Reward” Gap and Achievement

We see the pair of concepts “Enter — Exit” again!

Part 2 PRACTICE

Part 2 is about my real-life experiences running various projects from 2020 to 2023.

2.1 Life, Projects, and Events: The Biography of Yrjö Engeström (Nov 2020)

On Nov 29, 2020, I published the Life as Activity (v0.3) Framework and discussed the pair of concepts of “Events — Projects”.

My approach uses “events” and “projects” to present social context and individual biography. The difference between “events” and “projects” is individual involvement. If the person directly gets involved in an activity — it means she is the subject of the activity or part of the community of the activity — then the activity is a project of her biography. If the person doesn’t directly get involved in the activity, then the activity is an event of her biography.

I used the biography of Yrjö Engeström who is a leading Activity Theorist as an example. According to Annalisa Sannino, there are four main phases in Engeström’s development as an activity theorist, “(1) the European student movement of the 1960s and the discovery of activity theory; (2) the study of instruction and the turn from school learning to workplace learning; (3) developmental work research and the theory of expansive learning; and (4) the formation of activity-theoretical communities aimed at changing societal practices.” (2009, p.11) We can use the above diagram to represent Engeström’s biography.

Phase 1

• Event 1: the European student movement of the 1960s.
• Project 1: Engeström wrote his first book (Engeström,1970), Education in Class Society: Introduction to the Educational Problems of Capitalism (in Finnish).
• Event 2: Leontiev’s Problems of the Development of the Mind, published in East Germany in 1973 (Leontjew,1973), and Davydov’s Types of Generalizations in Instruction, which was available in East Germany in 1977 (Dawydow, 1977).
• Project 2: Engeström discovered Activity Theory by reading Davydov’s book and II’enkov’s essay on the dialectics of the abstract and the concrete.
• Project 3: Engeström adopted Activity Theory for his thesis, The Imagination and Behavior of School Students Analyzed from the Viewpoint of Education for Peace (in Finnish) in 1979. This empirical study documents the work of nearly 2,000 students who wrote essays on war and violence.

Phase 2

• Project 1: Engeström attempted to change school instruction by bringing Davydov’s ideas to politically and pedagogically radical Finnish teachers. He published a chapter in the 1984 book Learning and Teaching on a Scientific Basis.
• Project 2: Engeström started paying attention to workplace learning and human resource development in organizations. His first work-related study (1984) was concerned with janitorial cleaning, which was considered to be the occupation with the lowest prestige in Finland. The main motivation for studying the work of cleaners was to demonstrate that this work is creative and has an intellectual basis and to show the possibilities of development.

Phase 3

• Project 1: From 1986 to 1989, Engeström led a study with the primary health care practitioners and patients of the city of Espoo, where patients were facing excessive waiting times before receiving health care and a lack of continuity of care.
• Project 2: Engeström adopted Davydov's “learning activity” (1990) to investigate/implement radical change at work.
• Project 3: Engeström developed the triangular model of activity systems and the theory of expansive learning and published Learning by Expanding (1987).

Phase 4

• Event 1: Michael Cole directed the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition (LCHC) at the University of California, San Diego.
• Project 1: Engeström was invited to work at LCHC.
• Project 2: Engeström initiated communities for adopting activity theory for changing societal practices in Finland.
• Project 3: Inspired by the LCHC, Engeström founded the Center for Activity Theory and Development Work Research at the University of Helsinki.
• Event 2: Georg Rückriem worked on the translations of Leont’ev’s works in Germany.
• Project 4: Engeström suggested the idea of a conference in which scholars within Germany and elsewhere could gather to discuss ways of influencing human practices on the basis of activity theory. Subsequently, Rückriem started organizing the first conference of the International Society for Cultural Research and Activity Theory (ISCRAT), which took place in 1986.
• Event 3: LCHC published a Quarterly Newsletter titled Mind, Culture, and Activity.
• Project 5: Engeström suggested the creation of the journal Mind, Culture, and Activity, which was originally published as the Quarterly Newsletter of LCHC.
• Event 4: In 1995, Finland was struggling to overcome an economic recession, as were many other countries. The problems of the Finnish economy, however, were also connected with the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had been Finland’s main trading partner. Companies were under economic pressure and needed to find short-term solutions to the crisis.
• Project 6: Developmental work research was formulated in terms of a long developmental cycle of interventionist work lasting 3 to 5 years (Engeström & Engeström,1986). Companies in these years could not afford to engage in this kind of transformative venture. The intervention methodology of the Change Laboratory, as compressed cycles of transformation within the broader frame of developmental work research, was elaborated to meet the needs of these institutions.
• Event 5: The Center for Activity Theory and Development Work Research inspired the emergence of similar institutions, such as the Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory Research at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, the Centre for Sociocultural and Activity Theory Research at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and the Center for Human Activity Theory at the University of Kansai in Osaka, Japan.

The above example is just for showing the concepts of “events”, “projects”, and “concepts” within our approach.

2.2 Developmental Project Case Study: The Activity U Project (June 2021)

In June 2021, I made the Developmental Project Canvas for studying Projectivity.

I used the Activity U Project for the first case study.

I started the Activity U project on August 19, 2020. Initially, I just made a diagram called “Activity U” which is a test of the “HERO U” framework. I wrote a post to explain the diagram “Activity U”. The original title of the post is Activity U: The Landscape of Activity Theory. Later, I added “(Part I)” to the end of the title. It expanded from one post to a series of articles.

On October 1, I wrote a post to review the first year of CALL (Creative Action Learning Lab) and claimed that Activity Theory is a learning object for Transdisciplinary Thinking which means knowing between academic domains and non-academic domains.

My primary actions were reading and writing. I originally published long articles on Medium. Later, I curated them into three books.

You can find more details in Developmental Project Canvas.

2.3 Project I and The ECHO Way (May 2021, Feb 2022)

On May 25, 2021, I published Personal Innovation as Career-fit. In order to reflect on my own career experience, I adopted the Developmental Project Model and HERO U diagram for developing the Career-fit framework.

There is a new form of the Developmental Project Model: Project I.

The Career-fit framework uses Theme U to display six career themes. The diagram looks like U+I=Ψ.

The Ψ is a Greek capital letter psi. It is often used as a symbol to represent Psychology. What a wonderful coincidence! I really like psychology!!!

Later, I developed the ECHO Way (v2.0) framework in June 2021. The ECHO way is defined as a practical framework for guiding research, design, and development in the real-life world. As a knowledge framework, it has three components: diagrams, concepts, and methods.

The core of the ECHO way is the following diagram.

• Theme U
• Project I
• Container Z

If we apply it to the “Present — Future” fit for the Life Discovery Activity. We can roughly use three phases for this process:

• Life U: Think with the Theme U diagram.
• Project I: Act with the Developmental Project model.
• Echo Z: Reach the end of the journey: an expected place.

You can find more details in Personal Innovation as Career-fit, The ECHO Way (v2.0), Life Discovery: The “Present — Future” Fit and The ECHO Way, and Life Discovery: Running A Developmental Project.

2.4 Modeling A Developmental Project for Life Transitions (March 2022)

In 2022, I worked on developing the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework.

On March 22, I developed the AAS4LT framework (AAS4LT stands for “Anticipatory Activity System for Life Transitions”). It was a great milestone for the AAS project.

The AAS4LT framework is born from curating insights from both theoretical development and empirical research.

Though most of the ideas are adopted from the Anticipatory Activity System framework and other knowledge frameworks, the whole structure is inspired by an empirical research project about a person’s one-year life transitions.

If you read my articles about the iART Framework, you probably know that The Anticipatory Activity System is an expanded version of the iART Framework which was born from an empirical research project about an adult development program.

I’d like to call the program SSL which stands for Shaper & Supporter Lab. Anyway, it is just a codename. SSL was founded by a friend of mine in April 2021.

My friend started the journey in Feb 2021. Last month, we worked on reflecting on her life transition in the past 12 months. In the process of reflection, I realized that she did two activities during the one-year journey.

• Second-order Activity: She spent several months on Life Discovery.
• First-order Activity: Seh started the Shaper & Supporter Lab program as a Developmental Project.

I also observed that she worked hard on modeling her project and storytelling about her life discovery.

This insight inspired me to create the AAS4LT framework. This is an awesome discovery!

On March 26, 2022, I and my friend had a 90-minute video conversation about her project and the AAS project. It was a wonderful movement for both of us. We were super excited to SEE a real connection between Theory and Practice.

On March 27, 2022, I designed the diagram below to discuss “Modeling A Developmental Project” which is one of eight steps of the AAS4LT framework. I had discussed this step with my friend in the meeting.

It was a huge challenge to model a developmental project. This new diagram fully represented my thoughts about this issue and I SAW it in my friend’s case.

You can find more details in CALL for LIFE: Anticipatory Activity System for Life Transitions, CALL for LIFE: Modeling A Developmental Project, and Life Discovery: Running A Developmental Project.

2.5 Three Life Discovery Projects (Jan 2022 to June 2022)

From Jan 2022 to June 2022, I applied the Project Engagement approach to the Life Discovery Activity and developed a series of tools such as a toolkit, a canvas, and several models and frameworks.

I also joined the following three Life Discovery Projects:

• Shaper & Supporter Lab: I am a researcher.
• The AAS Board: I am a coach and a service designer.
• The Slow Cognition Project (Phase I): I am a creator.

The journey was documented in many articles. In July 2022, I edited a possible book titled Life Discovery: The Life-as-Project Approach.

The journey was complicated because I worked on both the Life Discovery Project and the Anticipatory Activity System framework. On Feb 23, 2022, I shared the complexity of this project network and my challenges. See the picture below.

Eventually, I developed a model called “Project Network” and used it to represent a multiple-level network that considers 1) a network of Themes, 2) a network of Projects, and 3) a network of People.

• All theoretical approaches and frameworks belong to the network of themes.
• All real activities such as developing a toolkit, designing a canvas, and hosting a program, are part of a network of projects.
• All things about people’s biogeography are located in the network of People.

The diagram below is the first case study of “Project Network”. It is a map of my six-month journey in developing the Life-as-Project approach.

Later, the three-layer “Project Network” was renamed Value Circle.

You can find more details in Life Discovery: Biography, Journey, Program (and a possible book, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

2.6 Mapping Thematic Journey (Sept 2022)

In Sept 2022, I worked on the Slow Cognition project and developed a method called “Mapping Thematic Journey”.

I used my journey of “Engaging with Activity Theory” to develop the method and related tools.

Mapping Thematic Journey uses a set of diagrams for visualizing a multi-project thematic journey. The above one is the main diagram which displays four projects in nested three circles.

Based on the “Mediating Action” model, I adopted some ideas from other Activity-based theoretical approaches and developed a new diagram for Mapping Thematic Journey.

In this way, we can switch between the “Journey” level and the “Project” level.

For the “Project” level, the method is called Mapping Developmental Projects. See the diagram below.

The above diagram uses “Model” and “Outcome” to expand the basic model of Activity Theory (Subject — Mediating Instruments — Object). You can pay attention to the yellow highlight:

• Subject
• Object
• Mediating Instruments
• Concept (the above case doesn’t have it)
• Modeling A Project
• Product
• By-product
• Solution as Contribution
• The Next Project
• Service (the above case doesn’t have it)

I used these Operational Concepts as keywords to analyze each project and made diagrams.

You can find more details in Slow Cognition: Mapping Thematic Journey (Engaging with Activity Theory, 2020–2022).

2.7 Once Upon A Whiteboard Project (Oct 2022)

In 2021, I developed several knowledge frameworks in order to test some meta-theories and meta-frameworks.

In order to test these frameworks, I also worked on the following independent research projects with diverse methods such as Ecological Observation, Participatory Research, Thematic Analysis, and Theory-based Reflection.

• A project about Self-installation Activity and Customer Service design.
• A project about Digital Whiteboard Platforms.
• A project about an Online Adult Development program.
• A project about Diagramming and Knowledge Building.

I used the lean approach to manage these projects. Since my primary goal is testing theoretical frameworks, I focused on collecting data and capturing insights, not writing final reports.

In Oct 2022, I reflected on these projects and developed a model called 5A Slow Cognition.

I use the following five keywords to summarize my creative pattern behind the journey of Slow Cognition:

• Aspirations
• Aspects
• Approaches
• Attachances
• Achievement

I used the Once Upon A Whiteboard Project as an example to discuss my journey of independent research.

The Once Upon A Whiteboard was born in April 2022. It is an independent project and adopts a lean study approach. It has a clear goal for testing my theoretical approaches and frameworks. However, the plan is not clear. I worked on both matching frameworks and platforms and researched real work cases one by one.

Though my original intention was to test my theoretical concepts and frameworks, I changed my mind and embraced multiple aspects of objects. I used the Sub-project method to capture some aspects I want to explore.

I created the following 10 sub-projects for the Once Upon A Whiteboard project:

• Sub-project 1: Milanote (BACK TO W.E.C.)
• Sub-project 2: Structural Engagement Theory (SET)
• Sub-project 3: Digital Space Affordance (DSA)
• Sub-project 4: Boardle (Social Diagramming)
• Sub-project 5: Platform Supportance
• Sub-project 6: Prezi v.s. Miro
• Sub-project 7: The Knowing-for-us Practice
• Sub-project 8: The Kanban Practice
• Sub-project 9: The Miro Classroom
• Sub-project 10: Platform Curativity

What kind of aspects of virtual whiteboards do these sub-projects refer to? See the diagram below. I listed two groups of aspects of virtual whiteboards and related platform-based social practices.

The Blue group is about the theme of “environment” and the theme of “activity”. I pay attention to the environmental aspect of virtual whiteboards. I also considered “using virtual whiteboards” as a work-type activity.

The Green group refers to the spatial aspect of virtual whiteboards and related social aspects, especially knowledge-related user experience.

Sub-projects are divided into two groups too: the Grey group refers to theoretical concepts or frameworks while the Yellow group refers to real examples. Some sub-projects refer to several aspects of virtual whiteboards and related social practices.

Let’s use the “Milanote (BACK TO W.E.C.) — Creative Curation” connection as an example for the present discussion.

The term “Creative Curation” is pretty interesting because there is a paradox behind the term: Curativity against Creativity. Creators tend to think and act without any frame. However, Curators tend to give a frame to think and act in order to make a meaningful whole.

Virtual Whiteboards make a balance between Curativity and Creativity. For example, Milanote is understood as “the Evernote for Creatives”. It also uses “Get organized. Stay creative.” as its slogan. See the screenshot below.

I also found the theme of “Creative Curation” from the BACK TO W.E.C. program which can be understood as an example of platform-based social practices. The program was designed as a two-month program. After one month, the program host discussed the progress with me and told me that they struggled with the style of program curation: open vs. control.

This is interesting because the theme of “Creative Curation” appears in both the technological environment and the social environment.

You can find more details in The “5A” Slow Cognition Model.

2.8 Appropriating Activity Theory (Dec 2022)

From Sept 2022 to Dec 2022, I reflected on my journey of engaging with Activity Theory from 2020 to 2022 and wrote several long articles. Each time I used a diagram or a framework to model the journey from a specific perspective.

Initially, my purpose was to develop some methods and frameworks for the Creative Life project. Later, I realized that I could collect these articles together and curate them into a new meaningful whole.

What’s the new meaningful whole?

It represents a journey of “Person-Theme” engagement. While I am the person, the theme refers to Activity Theory and related knowledge enterprise.

On Sept 9, 2022, I wrote an article titled The Attachance Framework (2018) and Thematic Engagement and introduced the Attachance framework. Today I used the framework to reflect on the “Oliver — Activity” thematic engagement. See the diagram below.

The above diagram highlights several important movements of my journey of Appropriating Activity Theory from 2015 to 2022.

Most moments are knowledge projects.

You can find more details in Appropriating Activity Theory (Book).

2.9 How did I develop the “Product Engagement” Framework? (March 2023)

In Feb 2023, I wrote a series of articles about Product-centered Business Development within two weeks. Business is a large field of social practice, I only focus on Product-centered Business Development activity. I used the Theory-based Reflection approach to adopt two theoretical approaches in order to develop a new Perspective called “Product Engagement”.

The outcome of the project is a possible book as a summary of my articles.

• 4 Parts
• 29 articles
• Total 613 min read
• Total 162,445 words (about 325 single-spaced pages)

On March 21, 2023, I used the Knowledge Discovery Canvas to reflect on the “Product Engagement” projects.

You can find more details in How did I develop the “Product Engagement” Framework?

2.10 The Mental Moves Knowledge Project (March 2023)

On March 24, 2023, I wrote a short article titled A Possible Theme called “Mental Moves”.

In the article, I used the Knowledge Discovery Canvas to frame a knowledge project. You can find more details in TALE: A Possible Theme called “Mental Moves”.

On July 31, 2023, I edited a book (draft) titled Mental Moves: The Attachance Approach to Ecological Creative Cognition.

Part 4 of the book is Creative Projectivity.

Following Part 2, I focus on “Moving between different actions of a project and between different projects” and “Stop working on a project or start a new project” in Part 4.

Originally, I didn’t use the concept of Projectivity for the Mental Moves project. Eventually, I realized that the concept of Projectivity is a concrete application of the concept of Attachance: the “Join — Project — Leave” Attachance.

Part 4 collected articles about the project-related Attachances. Though these case studies go beyond the original definition of Projectivity, we can use Creative Projectivity to name Part 4.

You can find more details in Mental Moves (book, v1) — Table of Contents.

2.11 Mental Models and Project (June 2023)

On June 9, 2023, I reflected on Mental Moves #3: Attachance, Thematic Space, and Framework (The “Thematic Space and Framework” case study) and Mental Moves #5: The Attachance of Rediscovery and Diagram Development (The “ARCH” case study).

The reflection inspired me to think about the relationship between Frameworks and Projects. Finally, I used the “dot and circle” diagram to make a new model.

You find more details in Mental Moves #6: Mental Models and the Attachance of Multiple Moves.

I also used the “dot and circle” diagram to discuss note-taking and projects.

In June 2023, I had a thematic conversation about “note-taking” with a friend. Our conversation inspired me to think about “note-taking”, “concept system” and “project engagement”.

On June 15, 2023, I made the above diagram. The primary focus of the diagram is “Note-taking” and “Draft-making”. If you find more details in Situational Note-taking: Capture Significant Insights Outside the Room.

2.12 The ECHO Trip (July 2023)

From June 24 to July 3, I had a wonderful 10-day road trip with my wife and two little sons.

During the busy trip, I couldn’t write notes with details. In order to record exciting moments and engaging experiences, I used short meaningful keywords to capture some insights while taking pictures.

These short meaningful keywords are Situational Themes of my life.

After returning to Houston, I listed 21 situational themes of the trip and conducted a “Creative Life Curation” project by using the ECHO Way model.

The above picture is the overview of the project.

• Project (Actions) → Stories (Notes) → Model → Creative Work

The 10-day road trip was a project that included a series of actions. After the project was completed, it became my life Experience.

I use “life as continuous flow” as a metaphor to describe Life and Experience. This metaphor is inspired by William James’ metaphor “Stream of Thought.” You can’t use a knife to cut a stream, you only can use a container to contain it.

If I do nothing with my subjective experiences of the 10-day road trip. It is only my memory. If I want to share it with others, I have to write notes, take pictures, record the trip, etc. In this way, I made Stories of the trip for social communicative context.

Though I didn’t write notes with details, I made 21 situational themes of the trip. These themes are Personal Signs which refer to my Subjective Meanings of the trip. These themes can be seen as micro-stories.

You can find more details in The ECHO Trip: A 10-day Road Trip and Creative Life Curation.

2.13 The Microdynamics of Creative Identity (Sept 2023)

From the perspective of the Project Engagement approach, Identity is an element of a Developmental Project Model and it’s related to other elements. Your identity is about how others view “what you do” and “who you are”. It’s also part of your self-knowledge.

Every time, you join a Project or leave a Project, your identity always changes. This is what I call the Microdynamics of Identity.

Life is a chain of projects, it is also a projection of social life.

By adopting the Developmental Project model, we have a way to reflect on the development of personal life and social life in one unit of analysis. We can connect psychology, sociology, and others.

On Sept 9, 2023, I applied some techniques I learned from Theoretical Sociologists to run a theoretical integration project about the concept of Mindset. You can find more details in Knowledge Engagement: The Concept of Mindset and Theoretical Integration.

The outcome is fantastic!

I made a Configurational Theory of Mindset and a new meta-framework called the Mental Tuning Framework. See the diagram below.

Am I a Theoretical Psychologist?

I just did an exercise of playing with some techniques of theoretical integration.

I learned these techniques from theoretical sociologists and applied them to a project about curating psychological theories.

Why did I do it?

On April 23, 2023, I made the attached diagram and used it to frame a creative space for “Creative Life Theory”.

In the past years, I worked on projects about the following four things:

1. The Psychology of Creativity
2. Ecological Psychology
3. Activity Theory
4. Theoretical Sociology

I consider the “Creative Life” thematic space as a creative space for connecting Sociology and Psychology.

I’d like to claim the uniqueness of “Creative Life” approach is its view on “Life” which refers to both individual life and social life.

In other words, there is no boundary between sociology and psychology in the creative space of “Creative Life”.

For the Mindset project, I used the “Creative Life” Container Z as the creative space. See the diagram below.

A theoretical psychologist could use the same technique to do the same job. In order to test this idea, I made a demo of theoretical integration by curating Carol S. Dweck’s version of Mindset theory and Peter Gollwitzer’s version of Mindset theory together.

You can find more details in Advanced Life Strategy: The Microdynamics of Creative Identity.

Part 3: Discussion

Now it’s time to synthesize THEORY and PRACTICE together. Let’s use the Knowledge Discovery Canvas to discuss the thematic space of “PROJECTIVITY”.

• Concepts: Projectivity, Attachance
• Approaches: The Project Engagement approach, The Ecological Practice approach
• Frameworks: The Developmental Project Model, Modeling Developmental Project, Kinds of Project Engagement, etc.
• Methods: Cultural Projection Analysis, Mapping Thematic Journey
• Heuristics: Developmental Project Canvas, The ECHO Way, etc.
• Projects: The Activity U project, The Life Discovery Project, the Once Upon A Whiteboard project, The Product Engagement project, The Mental Moves project, The ECHO Trip project, etc.

For the Project Engagement approach, Projectivity is a primary theoretical concept. For the Ecological Practice approach, Projectivity is a secondary theoretical concept.

Projectivity (Concept), the Developmental Project Model (Framework), and the Cultural Projection Analysis (Method) are located in three different blocks.

For the real-life projects, I used various models as heuristics for different purposes. For example, I used the Knowledge Discovery Canvas to reflect on the Product Engagement project. But for the Mental Moves project, I used the same canvas to frame a possible project.

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.

On July 30, 2022, I finished a 116-page thesis about the Project Engagement approach (V2.1).

The Project Engagement approach (V2.1) has multiple levels. It also has the following slogan:

Life = Projects = Thematic Spaces = Events = History

This slogan doesn’t mention the concept of Projectivity. However, the concept of Thematic Spaces is connected with Attachance. In this way, the slogan is about Projectivity too.