TALE: A Possible Theme called “Frame for Work”

Oliver Ding

Published in

TALE500

8 min readMay 10, 2023

An Ontology of Knowledge Frameworks

The above picture represents a Possible Theme called “Frame for Work”.

Name: Frame for Work
Clue: An Ontology of Knowledge Frameworks
Type: knowledge theme
Contributors: Daiana Zavate
Reference: The Ecological Practice approach
Related themes: Frame for Future

The possible theme “Frame for Work” was born on Jan 30, 2023.

It is a by-product of a thematic conversation about “Strategic Exploration”.

I used “a possible configuration of a theme network” to describe the structure of the things inside the thematic space. Moreover, I developed the notion of “Ecological Formism” with the following distinction:

Possible: many possible configurations of a theme network
Actual: a particular configuration of a theme network
Representation: a diagram of a particular configuration

This is a major outcome of the project from my perspective. On Jan 30, 2023, I realized that the further task is to develop a new ontology of knowledge frameworks after publishing the post about the Field of Meta-learning (v1.0).

In order to remember this significant insight, I made a cover image and used “Frame for Work” as a new possible theme.

This post shows some ideas about this theme.

A Thematic Space in my computer

Some readers ask me a question about the concept of “Thematic Space”. Where is a thematic space?

I use the term “Thematic Space” to refer to “a large cognitive space around a particular theme”. For example, my “Activity” thematic space.

Where is my “Activity” thematic space?

It is part of my personal journey of epistemic development which is part of my life as a continuous flow.

My Life as a continuous flow: Abstract Container
My journey of Epistemic Development: Abstract Container
My epistemological framework: Concrete Container (see this article)
An article about mapping my “Activity” thematic space: Concrete Container.

You can find more details in Thematic Space: Place as Container.

Where is my “Frame for Work” thematic space?

I created a folder called “Frame for Work” on my computer. You can see the screenshot below. I put some files related to the theme of “Frame for Work” there.

For example, HCI researcher and Design theorist Erik Stolterman shared his paper titled The Disciplinary Identity of HCI Research: An Investigation Using Configurational Theory with me several weeks ago. After reading the paper, I saved it in the folder.

The paper introduces Configurational Theory for framing a discipline. I wrote two articles about it recently. See the links below.

April 28, 2023 — TALE: A Possible Theme called “Possible Discipline”
May 9, 2023 — TALE: A Possible Discipline called “Platform Ecology”

Why did I like Configurational Theory? If you read my articles, you may know I have been working on Activity Theory and Curativity Theory for many years.

Activity Theory: its primary concept is “Object of Work”.
Curativity Theory: its primary concept is “turning pieces into a meaningful whole”

Now we can connect these ideas with “Possible Discipline”. See the diagram below:

What’s the relationship between Configurational Theory and the theme of “Frame for Work”?

I used “An Ontology of Knowledge Frameworks” as the clue for the theme of “Frame for Work”. Configurational Theory is a great method for developing ontological-level frameworks.

Filling the Container

In TALE: The Dynamics of Thematic Space (v2.0), I shared some a method of using a thematic space to develop a knowledge framework.

From the perspective of Curativity Theory, a simple idea of the journey of knowledge engagement is about “Filling the Container”.

A new possible theme frames a new thematic space for creative work. In the beginning, the new thematic space is an empty container. The rest of the journey is filling the empty container and developing a meaningful order for the new whole.

In order to fill the thematic space, you can do various things.

In Jan 2023, Daiana curated a set of ideas into the “Strategic Exploration” thematic space.

On Jan 19, Daiana added the notion of “Storytelling” to the “Strategic Exploration” thematic space.

How did I do with my “Frame for Work” thematic space?

On March 28, 2023, I revisited my old email conversations and found the diagram below. It was made for a private discussion about mental models and frameworks.

The diagram was made on Dec 1, 2022. It is a mental element for a conversation. On March 28, 2023, I detached from the private conversation and attached it to my “Frame for Work” thematic space. I also wrote a short note about this attach/detach action on Linkedin.

Other Inspired Pieces

I also collect some inspired pieces for the theme of “Frame for Work”. See the screenshots below.

#1 — Frame Creation (Kees Dorst, 2015)

Original paper:Frame Creation and Design in the Expanded Field (Kees Dorst, 2015)
Related paper: Blending Hard and Soft Design via Thematic Analysi

#2 — Vijay Kumar’s Innovation Toolkit

Original paper: Innovation Planning Toolkit (Vijay Kumar, 2004)
A related book: 101 Design Methods (Vijay Kumar, 2012)

#3 — Themes of ACI (Oliver Ding, 2020)

Original article: Hammer, Hammering, and Affordance (Oliver Ding, 2020)

#4 — A Note about TALE (Oliver Ding, 2023)

I made the above note for the TALE project. You can see two related posts below

#5 — A Real Example of using the Knowns and Unknowns framework

A related paper: The Knowns and Unknowns Framework for Design Thinking
A related blog post: The Known-Unknown Framework of Discovery

The notion of “Ecological Formism”

In fact, the notion of “Ecological Formism” was developed for the Creative Life Curation framework in Nov 2022. See the diagram below.

The above diagram redisplays four types of actors in a different visual layout. Now we can see the implicit similarity between Curators and Theoretical Sociologists.

I use “Linguistic Formism” as a label to describe Theoretical Sociologists, especially Ping-keung Lui’s approach.

For the Creative Life Curation framework, Curators tend to use Units of Analysis to reflect on Actors’ life experiences. There is a “frame” behind each Unit of Analysis. Curators work with Actors’ life experiences and frames.

I use First-order Experience and Second-order Experience to describe two types of life experiences. While First-order Experience is directly given, it requires using Techniques to detective Second-order Experience.

Since Curators have to deal with Actors’ life experiences, their frames have to be suitable for sensemaking with actions and projects. So, I called it “Ecological Formism”.

The similarity between Curators and Theoretical Sociologists is “Formism” while their difference is between the Ecological approach and the Linguistic approach.

You can find more details in Creative Life Curation: Kinds of Actors which was written on Nov 21, 2022.

On Jan 27, 2023, I wrote a post titled TALE: Possible Configurations of A Theme Network and used “Ecological Formism” again. That time I mentioned the meaning of “Ecological Formism”.

I will use some diagrams to discuss some examples of theme networks. As mentioned above, a diagram is the representation of a theme network. I have to emphasize the following distinction:
Possible: many possible configurations of a theme network
Actual: a particular configuration of a theme network
Representation: a diagram of a particular configuration
Is “Possible” real? It depends on your philosophical stance on realism.
I see the “Possible (Actual)” structure as a whole and claim it as a reality. You can call it Ecological Formism.
The Ecological Formalism stance sees “Possible” as a Form and “Actual” as Content.
The most important thing is the “perception — action” loop.
How does it work?
We perceive many possible configurations of a theme network…
…then select a particular configuration…
…finally, we make a diagram to represent the particular configuration.
We should notice that there is a gap between “Actual” and “Representation”.

In the past several months, I read Ping-keung Lui’s book Gaze, Actions, and the Social World and wrote 15 notes which were edited as a 228-page book (draft). You can find more details in A New Possible Book: Knowledge Engagement.

In these notes, I further developed the notion of “Ecological Formism”. I used the following terms to develop a framework for it:

Variant
Quasi-invariant
Invariant
Invariant Set

I will introduce this new framework later.