D as Diagramming: The Interactive Zone and Value Engagement

Unfold the Strategic Value Proposition diagram…

This post is part of the D as Diagramming project which aims to explore the power of diagrams and diagramming. What I really want to know is about the value of diagrams for turning tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge.

This post is based on my tacit knowledge of business strategy, marketing, and communication. I have over twenty years of work experience which can be divided into three stages: creative stage, strategic stage, and innovative stage.

At the creative stage, I worked for the advertising and media industry as a creative copywriter and designer. At the strategic state, I worked for pre-IPO stage enterprises as a business strategist and fundraising consultant. At the innovative stage, I worked on making brand-new digital tools and platforms as a researcher and designer. You can find more details from a previous article Personal Innovation as Concept-fit.

Can we consider this post as explicit knowledge? In a previous article titled Knowledge Building and Academic Creativity, I made a distinction between personal explicit knowledge and public explicit knowledge. This post only presents an early rough idea. I think it is personal explicit knowledge. I need to improve it and respond to feedback from you and others. This is the way of turning personal explicit knowledge into public explicit knowledge.

On July 12, 2021, I published a post titled D as Diagramming: Strategic Value Proposition and shared a diagram that was inspired by Michael Porter’s ideas on Value Proposition.

Porter defines the value proposition as the answer to three fundamental questions:
1. Which customers are you going to serve?
2. Which needs are you going to meet?
3. What relative price will provide acceptable value for customers and acceptable profitability for the company?

I expanded the framework with the Tripartness meta-diagram and named the outcome Strategic Value Proposition.

Tripartness 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. You can find more details about these meta-diagrams from a previous article: D as Diagramming: Tripartness and Diagram Blending.

The previous article D as Diagramming: The Dialectical Room and Value Engagement unfolded the Strategic Value Proposition diagram with the Dialectical Room diagram. This post aims to adopt the Interactive Zone diagram and the Theme U diagram for discussions.

The Interactive Zone and The Theme U

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 Theme U diagram presents six themes in a U shape. I have been using the diagram many times since June 2020. For example, I published an article titled Frame Analysis in Context with the following diagram on July 21, 2020. I said, “Inspired by the HERO U diagram, I made the following diagram to visualize six kinds of context: Physical, Digital, Personal, Social, Figure, and Idea. I name this process of diagramming for reflecting as Ecological Interaction Analysis.”

Theme U is not only about six themes, but about representing complex thematic relationships with spatial mediation. For example, I used the above right diagram to explain representing Pairs of Opposite Themes with the Theme U diagram.

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 Interest—Exchange Zone

Now, let’s apply the Theme U diagram to expand the Interest — Exchange Zone. I have discussed several pairs of concepts in the previous article D as Diagramming: The Dialectical Room and Value Engagement. For example:

• Difference v.s. Similarity
• Reason v.s. Emotion
• Brand v.s. Product

The Theme U diagram is based on three containers. Let’s consider the Interest Corner as Container X and the Exchange Corner as Container Y. These two containers are connected by Container Z. For the present case, the Interest — Exchange Zone means Container Z.

The next step is general emergent themes from the Theme U diagram. Let’s ask a question:

What’s the major difference between inside Container Z and outside Container Z?

I used two terms to answer this question. The term “Accept” refers to consumers’ attitudes inside Container Z while the term “Attract” refers to consumers’ attitudes outside Container Z. These two terms point out a spatial distance between two life moments.

The Exchange—Benefit Zone

Now, let’s apply the same method to discuss the Exchange — Benefit Zone.

I use the term “Act” as a primary theme inside Container Z since both “Buy” and “Use” are Acts.

For the theme outside Container Z, I consider the term “Inquire” because it refers to asking for more information from others or sharing more information with others in order to achieve better sensemaking.

The Benefit—Interest Zone

Finally, let’s connect the Benefit corner and the Interest corner. This time we can find a new pair of themes: Immerse v.s. Interpret.

Inside Container Z, consumers engage with products in their life situations. I use “Immerse” to highlight the primary theme of inside Container Z.

Outside Container Z, the term “Interpret” refers to discussing and talking about experiences with others.

Strategic Value Engagement

In order to summarize the above discussion, I use Theme U to curate six emergent themes together and name the new diagram Strategic Value Engagement.

The above diagram describes five types of spatial distances between six types of life moments.

From the perspective of customers, the process of Value Engagement means both Material Engagement (what customers actually do and say) and Mental Engagement (what customers actually feel and think).

Can companies determine what customers actually do, say, feel, and think? Let’s have a look at the Strategic Value Proposition diagram. What companies can control is the six types of ways of Value Propositions.

If we see each consumer as a particular actor who has his own agency in his life world, then companies can’t determine each actor’s life-world. However, what companies can do is designing and developing for Personas, not Persons. A persona is a set of abstract characters that describe a type of consumer of a product.

The distinction between Personas and Persons is good for all consumers.

Why?

If companies can design and develop highly customizable products for each particular person, then they could own more power in each person’s life world.

Is the future what you want?

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