D as Diagramming: Tripartness and Diagram Blending

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10 min readJul 30, 2021

Meta-diagram and Diagram Network

This article introduces a meta-diagram: Tripartness. It is one of a set of meta-diagrams I designed in 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 above picture shows the 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

These diagrams are meta-diagrams too. Why do we need meta-diagrams?

Meta-diagrams Really Matter

I have mentioned an idea called Avocado Effect which describes an essential structure called “meta-product / product”. If we apply the Avocado Effect to diagramming, we can see the same structure: “meta-diagram / diagram”.

Diagrams is one of my essential three knowledge units. I love to dwell in thought with diagramming. I even wrote a 108-page thesis that develops a theory about diagrams and diagramming in 2018. 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 special 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.

I have discussed this topic in a previous article: Activity U (IV): The Engeström’s Triangle and the Power of Diagram. If you want to go deep, you can read the following sections of the article:

5.1 Diagram (Representation) v.s. Diagramming (Instrument)
5.2 Spatial thought v.s. Linguistic thought
5.3 Knowledge model v.s. Knowledge brand

As Engeström mentioned, “I use the graphic models in series of successive variations, not just as singular representations…With the help of such variations, I try to demonstrate how the models can depict movement and change. The reader is invited to formulate and test his own variations.” (1987, p.47) We should remember that a diagram is not a dogma but a guide to action.

The #Non2x2Matrix Challenge

Last year, I started a challenge called #Non2x2Matrix.

In 2018, I wrote a 108-page personal thesis about diagrams and diagramming. I found many management and business thinkers like using a 2x2 matrix to represent their ideas. And, it is really bad!

In Nov 2019, I read a paper titled The technology-mindset interactions: Leading to incremental, radical or revolutionary innovations. The authors used a 2x2 matrix to generate three types of innovation models. I believe this matrix is too simple because it only considers two dimensions: technological transformation and mindset transformation. I’d like to add the third dimension: culture transformation.

This reading experience inspired me to initiate the #Non2x2Matrix Challenge in order to encourage people to use something beyond the 2x2 Matrix.

Why do we use the 2x2 Matrix? Because we need a visual frame to represent our ideas. If we always use the 2x2 Matrix, it becomes the cage of our mind. Meta-diagrams really matter. We need more choices on meta-diagrams.

The Tripartness Diagram

I made the Tripartness diagram in 2018 when I created the Ecological Zone framework.

The original Ecological Zone Framework considers three Subjects, three Zones, and one shared Theme. In order to make the meta-diagram, I rename these elements with more abstract words such as Corner, Zone, Center, and Context.

In fact, I really do not need these words if I use them for creating new diagrams. However, I’d like to share this diagram with readers and I want to connect it with other diagrams. I need words for our communication.

It’s easy to create a new diagram with the Tripartness meta-diagram. You only need to use some words to replace Corner, Zone, Center, and Context. For example, I recently created a diagram to curate my three theoretical accounts. See the diagram below:

On July 4, 2021, I finished a 64-page thesis titled The Epistemology of Domain which offers a brand new theory about Domain. On July 5, 2021, I sent an email to a friend with my draft. At the end of the email, I used the following three keywords to summarize my three major theoretical creations.

Opportunity: The Ecological Practice Approach
Objective: Project-oriented Activity Theory
Outcome: The Epistemology of Domain

Later, I used the Tripartness diagram to re-organize these ideas. I also adopted the pair of concepts “Lifeway/Lifeform” to the diagram. Finally, I made a new framework for discussing career development.

This led to a new book! I added the new diagram to the Career Curation board and started writing! I have written 106 pages for the first draft in Chinese.

Each Corner is a Dialectical Room

On Jan 3, 2021, I published an article titled Activity U (VIIII): Project-oriented Activity Theory which introduces Andy Blunden’s Project-oriented theoretical approach to Activity with a series of diagrams.

I used the diagram below as a meta-diagram for making a diagram system.

The above diagram is a “germ-cell” diagram for Project-oriented Activity Theory. It is better to think about this diagram as a room with two windows and one door.

A room is a container that separates inside space and outside space. There are some actions people can do within a room. I pay attention to one special type of action: connecting to the outside space from the inside space. Let’s call it “Process”. The two windows are interfaces that refer to two “Tendencies”, Window1 refers to “Tendency 1” while Window 2 refers to “Tendency 2”. Each window has its own view of the outside space. Finally, there is a door that allows people to actually go out of the room. The door refers to “Orientation” which represents a direction of a real action of going out of the inside space. Once you get into the outside space, you can consider the new space as a new room and repeat the diagram.

This is a special type of spatial logic. The terms such as “Process”, “Tendency” and “Orientation” are placeholders of texts for describing the spatial logic. From the perspective of my diagram theory, the pure meta-diagram doesn’t need text. For instance, the Yin-yang symbol or Taijitu is a meta-diagram, can you find one text from it? However, we can add some texts as placeholders to a pure meta-diagram in order to better describe it.

Later, I made the above diagram a new meta-diagram. It has a new name: Dialectical Room.

Now let’s connect it with the Tripartness diagram. We can understand each Corner as a Dialectical Room. For example, the picture below highlights a Corner of the Strategic Value Proposition diagram.

I adopted the Dialectical Room diagram to make a new diagram for understanding the Interest corner.

You don’t have to use the Dialectical Room if you like other diagrams. Here I want to highlight the idea of Diagram Network. You can adopt one of my meta-diagrams and use it with other diagrams. By using these diagrams as a network, you can easily curate your loose ideas and knowledge.

The Interactive Zone

I made the Tripartness diagram in 2018 when I created the Ecological Zone framework which has three zones.

The above diagrams are the basic model (left) of the Ecological Zone framework and its standard model (right).

I recently turned the basic model of the Ecological Zone into a meta-diagram with a new name: the Interactive Zone.

There are many possible themes within an interactive zone. Also, some themes are close to one corner. For example, Theme A1 and Theme A2 are close to Corner A.

Now we can adopt the Theme U meta-diagram to discuss themes within an interactive zone. The diagram below is for understanding the Interest-Exchange Zone. The Theme U diagram uses six themes to connect two containers. The middle container is the third container which is considered as a zone.

Theme U is also part of the ECHO Way (2.0). You can find more details here and two related diagrams: the Project I diagram and the Container Z diagram.

The Hierarchical Loops

I have mentioned an issue about the “Affordance — Supportance” hierarchical loops in a previous article.

It is useful to conduct Affordance Analysis for the Platform-for-Development framework. However, I want to remove Affordance Analysis from the Supportive Cycle model. In order to solve this problem, I need to design a new diagram for visualizing the “Affordance — Supportance” hierarchy loop and placing two level analysis together.

Now the solution is the following new diagram which presents two levels: Center and Context. Again, these two words are just for communication. As a meta-diagram, we really don’t need words. You have to use your own concepts to replace these two words.

For example, I used the pair of concepts “Lifeway / Lifeform” to replace Center and Context.

The above diagram is only useful at the theoretical level. I also adopted the pair of concepts “Subject — Object” from Activity Theory and the pair of concepts “Enter — Exit” from the Ecological Practice Approach to expand the above diagram.

The above new diagram, the Lifesystem diagram, is made by a Diagram Blending with a matrix and the Hierarchical Loops. It offers a foundation for creating a new framework for operational-level research.

Diagram Blending

The term “Diagram Blending” is inspired by Conceptual Blending. I use Diagram Blending to describe the process of connecting two or more diagrams together.

Diagram Blending is about compressing multiple spatial relationships from several diagrams into one diagram. The above Lifesystem diagram is a simple example of Diagram Blending.

How to use the Tripartness meta-diagram?

The above discussion has offered a guide for using the Tripartness meta-diagram.

What you need to do is the following steps:

Define your concepts that are related to your situational challenges.
Use some keywords to describe your concepts.
Use your keywords to replace Corner, Zone, Center, and Context.
Discover themes within each Zone.
Use the Dialectical Room diagram to expand each Corner.
Use the Interactive Zone diagram or/and the Theme U diagram to expand each Zone.
Use the Hierarchical Loops diagram to expand the concepts “Center — Context”.

All these meta-diagrams are very simple, you can easily draw them on paper cards. For example, I made the following draft with the Dialectical Room on Feb 27, 2021. Why did I do it? I wanted to use one diagram to curate my ideas about the Ecological Practice approach together. I have created a similar diagram for Project-oriented Activity Theory. So, I just try to reuse the diagram to curate the Ecological Practice approach.

The diagram below is the original diagram for Project-oriented Activity Theory.

However, I didn’t adopt it for the final diagram. After two months, I designed a new diagram as the final diagram for the third version of the Ecological Practice approach. I published it on April 26, 2021.

I hope you enjoy these meta-diagrams. I’ll use these meta-diagrams to expand the original Strategic Value Proposition diagram in the next article. In fact, this is the reason I write this article.

You are most welcome to connect via the following social platforms:

Polywork: https://www.polywork.com/oliverding
Twitter: https://twitter.com/oliverding
Boardle: https://www.boardle.io/users/oliver-ding
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverding

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