D as Diagramming: The Value-fit Framework and Canvas
A diagram blending about Value Engagement
The above diagram was designed on Oct 8, 2021. Why did I design it that day?
The D as Diagramming project is organized with several themes and random ideas. For example, iART is a theme that is expanded from one post into a sub-project (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). The Strategic Value Proposition diagram is a random idea, however, it inspired me to design a set of diagrams.
On July 12, I published a short post about the Strategic Value Proposition diagram. On July 13, I adopted several meta-diagrams to expand them into a diagram network. However, I didn’t write articles for the diagram network. I realized that I need to write a post about the concept of Diagram Blending and Diagram Network first. This insight was a major idea of the D as Diagramming project. Later, it led to the iART sub-project.
Inspiration
I recently noticed that some readers come to read the short post about the Strategic Value Proposition diagram, so I decided to write articles about the diagram network.
On Oct 7, I reviewed the two diagrams below and got an idea of blending them together.
The outcome is the Value-fit framework. It looks like a running track. It also created a new approach to 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.
Last week I published two articles about Value Engagement.
Each article produces a Theme U diagram. The two Theme U diagrams were designed in July. So, these two articles are planned. I knew what I wanted to write.
By-product
The Value-fit framework diagram was not planned, it was emergent. I called such kinds of emergent ideas by-products that were adopted from Howard Gruber. I have mentioned it in the Achievement Chain which is a module of the Life-as-Activity framework (v0.3).
By-product is a normal phenomenon for experienced individual workers and teams. In his study of Charles Darwin, Howard Gruber (1974) showed that even a great scientist embraces by-productive thinking in his creative work process. Gruber said, “In his beautiful book Productive Thinking, Max Wertheimer, founder of Gestalt psychology, focused his attention on the kind of direct thinking that goes to the heart of the probiel under attack. In Darwin’s long and twisting path, however, there are several striking examples of important steps toward the theory of evolution through natural selection being taken as by-products of efforts that seemed to move in other directions…The theory of coral reefs was based on an extrapolation from what Darwin has learned about the formation of continental mountain chains; if mountains are up-raised, he reasoned, the adjacent sea bed must sink; from this slow subsidence of the sea bed, the coral-reef theory followed. That theory does not deal at all with organic evolution, but it does provide a formal model quite analogous to Darwin’s eventual theory. Darwin did not have a five-year plan to move through this important sequence of ideas. It evolved. The monad theory, itself short-lived in Darwin’s thought and not entirely original, led him to his branching model of evolution. This became a cornerstone of his thought.” (1974, p.112) In contemporary knowledge work activities, there are many ways to generate by-products. Activity theorists also claim that mediation of an activity can be transformed into an object of a new activity.
Gruber also introduces another concept to explain how the individual maintains his sense of direction with the by-product effect: purpose. According to Gruber, it refers to a person’s ability to imagine himself outside the perspective of the moment, to see each sub-task in its place as part of the larger task he has set himself. He said, “This abstract purposefulness and perspective, this standing outside, is an activity undertaken in quite a different spirit from that in which the creative person immerses himself, lose himself in the material of nature. To accomplish his great synthesis Darwin had to be able to alternate between these two attitudes. To see more deeply into nature, he needed the perceptual, intuitive direct contact with the material. To understand what he had seen, and to construct a theory that would do it new justice, he had to re-examine everything incessantly from the varied perspectives of his diverse enterprises.” (1974, p.113) From the perspective of Life-as-Activity, the purpose is the key to holding the complex temporal activity chains over long periods of time.
From the perspective of Curativity Theory, the creative person should hold a primary theme for each creative enterprise and consider the value of each piece from three levels: moment, project, and theme. In this way, he can build his creative work as a meaningful whole.
Canvas
On Oct 15, I expanded the Value-fit framework into a canvas. The original diagram is placed in the center of the canvas and its surrounding space is separated into several small sub-spaces. Each sub-space corresponds to a concept.
This is not a typical strategy for designing a canvas. People tend to directly design spaces for concepts without a diagram.
What is the major difference between a framework/diagram and a canvas? A simple answer is that the former focuses on expressing the relationship between several concepts while the latter primarily offers spaces for posting notes which can be considered as data about concepts. In other words, a canvas is a situational application of a framework/diagram.
I’d like to share a background of designing the Value-fit canvas. I recently joined the Design & Critical Thinking community (Kevin Richard, thx for the invitation!) and found a product innovation framework called Product Field which was developed by Klaus-Peter Frahm, Michael Schieben, and Wolfgang Wopperer-Beholz.
On Oct 10, I visited the Product Field framework’s website and read its document.
According to the authors of the framework, “The visual form of the Product Field is a Mandala. According to the Groups Keyboard a mandala helps you and your team to perceive wholeness and see gaps and unities under a diversity of perceptions.”
On Oct 14, I watched the video below. Wow, this is an amazing video! You should watch it and don’t miss the last section.
I learned the notion of “Conceptual Space” from their guide. According to the authors,
The Product Field’s conceptual space is defined by two dimensions derived from the creation-to-introduction vector of product innovation’s canonical definition. To arrive at the dimensions, the vector is first decomposed into two orthogonal bases:
1. A product originates inside an organization and has to reach users and customers outside of it; thus it follows an inside-to-outside trajectory. This constitutes the introduction basis of the vector.
2. A product is implemented to achieve a certain purpose for the stakeholders; thus it follows a purpose-to-implementation trajectory. This constitutes the realization basis of the vector.
These bases are then extended to form the introduction and realization dimensions of the Product Field’s conceptual space, which can thus be interpreted as a two-dimensional, finite cartesian coordinate system.
Wow, it looks like there is a theory for designing canvas!!! Today Klaus-Peter Frahm tells me there is a book titled Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of Thought.
The above information is the background of my creative work. Inspired by the Product Field canvas, I designed the Value-fit canvas on Oct 15.
On Oct 18, I added some notes to the canvas.
The grey words highlight key ideas from the previous two articles. Thus, the above canvas is a summary of my writings and thoughts about Value Engagement. In other words, it is a representation of my tacit knowledge.
In a previous article D as Diagramming: Knowledge Building and Academic Creativity, I mentioned three phases and three functions of diagramming for academic knowledge building:
- Phase 1: Curating for Understanding
- Phase 2: Creating for Sensemaking
- Phase 3: Improving for Communicating
In Phase 3, creators tend to share their personal explicit knowledge with friends or the community and expect feedback from others. The focus of knowledge-building activity moves from sensemaking to communicating in order to produce the final outcome such as published papers or books.
For Phase 3, diagrams become containers of knowledge and mediation of communication. Creators work on improving the knowledge product with diagrams and revise diagrams too. This process means the transformation from personal explicit knowledge into public explicit knowledge.
If we apply this model to the Value-fit canvas, it could be understood as personal explicit knowledge at the current stage.
The Ecological Practice Canvas
Moreover, the Value-fit canvas offers me a new inspiration for blending Theme U together in a connected way. I realize that this is perfect for my theoretical approach: the Ecological Practice approach.
Why?
Because the Ecological Practice approach is about the engagement of “environment — person”. This canvas offers a new space for visualizing engagement.
The above highlights three letters: E, V, and P.
- E: it refers to Environment.
- V: it refers to Value.
- P: it refers to Person.
The Ecological Practice approach is inspired by Ecological Psychology. While Ecological Psychology focuses on Affordances, the Ecological Practice approach focuses on Ecological Value which refers to the valuable resources of the environment in a broad sense. Ecological psychologist Edward Reed uses the term ‘Social Appropriation’ to highlight this theoretical meaning. He emphasizes, “We all live in the same environment, even though our habits differ, showing that a variety of combinations of proper and expedient ways can be successful. Underlying this process of social appropriation of the valuable resources of the environment are the various human techniques for sharing the socializing awareness.” (1988, p.66)
Reed also comments on the different ways of perceiving ecological values. He says, “Pictures, language, maps, measuring systems, and so on enable people to communicate about the facts of the environment. These techniques can fix and constrain awareness for good or for ill. Symbols do not create realities, but they do help specify the realities that we are interested in…Gibson’s later distinction between direct perception (first-hand experience) and indirect perception (second-hand knowledge, usually socially mediated) emerged from his early concern to try to separate veridical perception from stereotyped, schematized, or otherwise constrained perception. ”(1988, p.66)
I adopted the concept of Affordance from ecological psychology and developed several new concepts such as Supportance, Attachance, Curativity, etc. These concepts form a group of Ecological Values.
Though I have developed several frameworks for these concepts, the new canvas provides a new general tool for the whole approach.
Meta-canvas?
One more thing is reflecting on the Ecological Practice Canvas.
What’s it?
The last section has answered it from the concrete level. How about the abstract level?
While the concrete level refers to a particular thing, the abstract level could point to a category to which the thing belongs to.
Is the Ecological Practice Canvas a meta-canvas?
Yes. It doesn’t have any value if you just take it without adopting concepts to replace the “V”. If you use Affordance to replace “V” and identify six themes for “E” and six themes for “P”, then you can create the Affordance-fit Canvas. You can apply the same method to generate the Supportance-fit Canvas, the Curativity-fit Canvas, etc.
This is the way how a meta-canvas works.
…
This is the beauty of creative work!
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