TALE: A Possible Theme called “Product as Thing”

Oliver Ding

Published in

TALE500

25 min readFeb 13, 2023

The Ecological Practice Approach to Product Development

On Feb 6, 2023, I shared a possible theme called “Project Engagement” with the following diagram.

On Feb 7, I offered details about the sub-theme of “Business as Engagement”. Yesterday I shared a related theme called “Idea Engagement”.

Today I am going to introduce the Ecological Practice approach for the sub-theme of “Product as Thing”. The notion of “Product as Thing” is inspired by the “Ecological Practice” approach and related theoretical resources.

Inspired by Ecological Psychology, Activity Theory, and other theoretical resources, I developed a new theoretical approach called “Ecological Practice”.

The approach is formed with the following concepts:

Affordance
Attachance
Supportance
Curativity
Genidentity
Containance
Lifesystem
Infoniche
Themes of Practice
Thematic Space
… some other concepts

This article will offer more details about the Ecological Practice approach and connect it with Product Development. I will focus on five concepts: Affordance, Attachance, Supportance, Curativity, and Genidentity.

The Ecological Practice Approach

In Oct 2020, I wrote an article titled The Ecological Practice Approach Toolkit and shared my work on a new approach for practice studies. This approach was originally called the Gibson — Lakoff — Schön approach because I adopted theoretical concepts from James J. Gibson, George Lakoff, and Donald Schön.

From 2019 to 2022, the approach was developed in the “Slow Cognition” way. Each year, I wrote a book and introduce a theoretical concept.

2019: Curativity: The Ecological Approach to Curatorial Practice > Curativity
2020: After Affordance: The Ecological Approach to Human Action > Attachance
2021: Platform for Development: The Ecology of Adult Development in the 21st Century > Supportance
2022: Ecological Practice Design: The Lifesystem Approach to Everyday Life Innovation > Lifesystem

I have developed three versions of the approach. Since each version adds some new concepts to the approach, it’s better to see these versions as a whole.

This 2019 version is a curated toolkit version. In a broad sense, the Ecological Practice approach has its philosophical roots in traditional Pragmatism and contemporary embodied cognitive science.

The above diagram shows several theoretical concepts. Some concepts are adopted from theoretical resources. The concept of Selectivity is adopted from William James’ Radical Empiricism. The concept of Affordance is adopted from Ecological psychologist James J. Gibson. The concept of Reflectivity is adopted from Donald Schön. I also developed several original concepts such as Attachance, Containance, Curativity, and Themes of Practice.

In 2020, I developed a new diagram to represent the germ-cell of the Ecological Practice approach. See the below.

According to Andy Blunden (2017), “The idea of the ‘cell’ originates with the philosopher of history, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803). In his effort to understand the differences between peoples, Herder introduced the idea of a Schwerpunkt (‘strong point’)…Herder’s friend, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), sought to utilize this idea in his study of botany during his Italian journey in 1786, to understand the continuity and differences between the plants found in different parts of the country. Goethe came to the idea of an Urphänomen ‒ not a law or principle, but a simple, archetypal phenomenon in which all the essential features of a whole complex process are manifested.”

A Germ Cell of a theoretical approach is its smallest entity which can represent the whole of thinking in different levels of analysis. The above diagram below shows the germ cell of 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.

On Mar 12, 2021, I published an article to introduce the concept of Supportance. On April 2, 2021, I made a new diagram for the Ecological Practice approach.

The above diagram summarizes the core concepts of the Ecological Practice Approach. It is an expansive version of the Germ-cell version.

You can find more details in The Development of Ecological Practice Approach (2021).

The Notion of “Product as Thing”

Inspired by Ecological Psychology and other theoretical resources, the Ecological Practice approach offers a systematic multip-level framework to connect the Potential, Actual, and Thematic aspects of social practices.

Potential: possible opportunities
Actual: real acts and actions
Thematic: themes behind curated actions

In order to apply the Ecological Practice approach to the field of Product Development, I developed a possible theme called “Product as Thing” and developed a basic model to visualize my thoughts about the theme.

The basic unit of the Ecological Practice approach is the “Person — Thing” interaction and relationship.

Potential: the potential possible opportunities that a person could act with a particular thing.
Actual: what does a person actually act with the thing? Act 1 and Act 2 refer to two types of acts.
Focus: it refers to the thing the person is acting with.

From different perspectives, we can find many ways to discuss the “Person — Thing” interaction and relationships. In order to simplify the discussion, I use one thematic space to discuss one aspect of the thing.

I select the following five aspects to connect the Ecological Practice approach and the “Person — Thing” interaction and relationship. If you use other theoretical approaches, you can use the above basic model to build your own thematic spaces.

The Natural aspect of Thing: Affordance > Object
The Social aspect of Thing: Supportance > Artifact
The Commercial aspect of Thing: Attachance > Product
The Digital aspect of Thing: Curativity > Platform
The Cultural aspect of Thing: Genidentity > Brand

The above diagram also shows ten types of actions:

Found
Use
Make
Share
Sell
Buy
Host
Join
Call
Tell

The above diagrams don’t consider Roles and Environments. We can discuss these elements in case studies.

The “Natural” Aspect of “Thing”

The starting point of the Ecological Practice approach is the concept of “Affordance” which was developed by the ecological psychologist James. J. Gibson in his 1989 book The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception.

Many people hold different views on the concept of Affordance. The Ecological Practice approach only uses the concept of Affordance on discussing the Natural aspect of Thing. I use the “Natural” aspect to refer to both the technical aspect and the material aspects too.

What’s Affordance? Let’s have a look at the original definition made by James J. Gibson:

The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill. The verb to afford is found in the dictionary, but the noun affordance is not. I have made it up. I mean by it something that refers to both the environment and the animal in a way that no existing term does. It implies the complementarity of the animal and the environment. (p.119)

Though the core of Gibson’s theory is visual perception, we can see the whole “Perception-Affordance-Action” loop as a theory of action and apply it to new fields. Perceiving affordances is for taking actions, taking actions has an impact on the environment and changes the affordances of the environment.

Anthropologist Tim Ingold (1993) argued a distinction between tools and artifacts: “A tool, in the most general sense, is an object that extends the capacity of an agent to operate within a given environment; an artefact is an object shaped to some pre-existent conception of form” (p.433) Ingold’s view focused on “non-designed” or “designed”.

Ecological psychologist Harry Heft (2001) suggested that it’s better to use “Found Tools” to refer to “non-designed” tools. He gave many examples, “…found tools, are identified and selected because of the suitability of their affordance properties in support of some action. Long grasses or stripped branches employed as probes in feeding at insect nests; broad, rigid leaves used to shovel insects into the mouth; stones used as hammers for cracking hard shells of nuts are examples. ” (p.341)

Found
Use

Another distinction is “Immediate use” and “Conventional use” as suggested by Heft, “…in addition to learning about how to use an object, the individual learns the meaning of the object itself within the practices of the culture. To the extent that this possibility has merit, it is an important step in understanding how objects take on conventional or culturally prescribed meaning beyond their immediate use functions.”(p.345)

“Immediate use” can be “designed use” or “found use”. I think the most important idea behind “immediate use” is resourcefulness or everyday creativity while Heft used the distinction to highlight the aspect of social learning. A designer can get an insight from his own creative “immediate use” or observe others’ creative “immediate use” and turn the insight into a “designed use” which could be turned into a “conventional use” by the distribution of a newly designed artifact.

In the above diagram, I use “Normal” to refer to “Conventional use” while “Novel” is about “non-Conventional use”. For Product Development, the most important point is to observe “Immediate use” in order to find “Novel acts” or “Problematic Normal acts”.

You can find more details in Hammer, Hammering, and Affordance.

The “Social” Aspect of “Thing”

The concept of Supportance refers to potential supportive action possibilities offered by a social environment. It is inspired by Ecological psychologist James J. Gibson’s concept of Affordance which refers to potential action possibilities offered by environments. Both two concepts are potential action possibilities.

However, the concept of Affordance can be applied to both animals and humans and Gibson uses it for talking about visual perception. In order to discuss potential supportive action possibilities between a person and other people and social environments in general, I coined the term Supportance and developed it as a theoretical concept for the Ecological Practice approach.

The concept of “Supportance” is perfect for discussing the “Social” aspect of “Thing” because there is a distinction between the natural environment and the social environment.

Why do I emphasize the distinction between the natural environment and the social environment? There are at least four important aspects that we can’t ignore:

Rational agency
Language engagement
Ownership
Remote presence

Physical artifacts and animals don’t have rational agency. They also can’t negotiate through language such as text. Artifacts don’t claim ownership of environments and affordances, however, humans consider ownership as a critical right for social life. Finally, humans can present remotely by adopting emerging communication technologies.

Gibson doesn’t agree with the distinction between the artificial environment and the natural environment. I follow his stance and consider natural/physical/technological environments as a whole. However, we have to notice Gibson’s idea of “one world, however diverse.” In order to discuss the complexity of “one world”, we need a concept such as ‘social environment’ to describe the diverse context of social life. Thus, I believe that there is a need to adopt the ‘social environment’ as a new unit of analysis while remaining the basic philosophical stance behind Gibson’s ecological psychology.

The above diagram only focuses on the non-commercial social aspect of thing. It highlights two typical acts of using “Artifact” in the social environment.

Make
Share

If a person makes a new thing for some purpose, then the new thing is an artifact.

If the person shares the artifact with others, the artifact becomes a gift.

The Ecological Practice approach considers a gift as an objectification of social support. In this way, we can apply the concept of Supportance to discuss the “non-commercial social” aspect of thing.

Traditionally, researchers pay attention to the effect of social support on health, quality of life, and especially mental health. I aim to adopt the ecological practice approach to discuss the notion of ‘social support’ in a broader scope in a general sense.

Suppose there is only one woman and a 3-year-old girl at the scene. The woman can’t hold the picture frame because the little girl doesn’t have enough strength to help her. Thus, the woman should look for potential support from others who could offer such support with corresponding capacities.

From the perspective of Supportance, ‘support’ means not only intended support but also unintended support.

Intended support: Person A intends to give some support to person B.
Unintended support: Person A doesn’t intend to give some support to person B, but person B actualizes some supportances which are offered by Person A.

Both intended support and unintended support require Perception and Capability from Person B, however, unintended support doesn’t require Intentionality from Person A. The same logic can be applied to the level of institutionalized actions.

Since Supportance is potential, if we don’t talk about its actualization, then this concept doesn’t have any value. Once we pay attention to the actualization of supportances, we see a new creative space for developing a new theory of social actions.

The above diagram roughly presents my ideas on the Actualization of Supportances which considers a structure of three phases. Phase 1 is Perception, it focuses on the transformation between Potential and Actual. Phase 2 is Action, which focuses on the transformation between Challenge and Response. Phase 3 is Curation, which focuses on the transformation between the Individual and the Collective. As a dynamic process, these three phases don’t form a simple linear process. Phase 2 and phase 3 often provide feedback to phase 1.

You can find more details in The Concept of Supportance.

The “Commercial” Aspect of “Thing”

I coined the term Attachance by combining Attach and Chance in 2018 in order to discuss some ideas related to the concept of Affordance which is 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.

In 2019, I started working on my own theoretical account of the Ecological Practice approach after finishing a book 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 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 Attachance Perspective to refer to its philosophical meaning. You can find more details in D as Diagramming: The Attachance Perspective.

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 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.

How to apply the concept of Attachance to the field of Product Development, especially the “Commercial” aspect of “Thing”?

We can find the answer from the “Germ Cell” version of the Ecological Practice approach. See the diagram below.

Interesting! We can directly use the above diagram to explain the process of transaction which is the core of the “Commercial” aspect of “Thing”.

Container: the environment of transaction
Offers: a product is an offer
Acts: a customer purchases the product
Attach: the product and the customer have to move into the environment of transaction
Detach: the product and the customer leave the environment of transaction

Moreover, the “Offers — Acts” interaction can be used to explain more interaction between customers and sellers. For example, negotiation.

Decision refers to what a consumer decides to do while Context refers to the consumer’s life situation.

After deciding to buy a product, the consumer should decide on more details such as:

When: buy it today, buy it next weekend, or three months later…
Where: buy it from a particular local store, or buy it from a particular online store…
Who: buy it alone, buy it with friends, or buy it with a group of others…
How many: buy one, buy a particular one, or buy an amount of the product…

In fact, the above details are related to Context which is the life situation of the consumer.

In the past twenty years, the rise of behavioral economics offers various scientific research about human decisions for business managers and product designers who want to understand consumer behaviors. It is clear that the buying decision is both emotional and rational.

While fast-moving consumer goods are driven by emotional decisions, others rely on rational negotiations. The process of purchasing is also a process of negotiation, especially for durable consumption goods and high-value products.

In addition to the acts of “Sell” and “Buy”, we can also use the Attachance framework to see the whole life cycle of a product.

The above diagram was developed in 2018 with a name called the Ecological Transformation Framework. Its original purpose was to develop a framework for reflecting on my work experience in Interaction Design.

Each red line refers to an Attach/Detach act between two containers. Each red line means a type of Attachance.

Each type of Attachance has its own specific settings of time and space. For example, Move means there is a distance (space) between Non-Act and Before-Act, and there is no previous (time) interaction between Subject and Object.

I used “Far — Near — With — Near — Far” as the spatial structure to develop the framework. The structure also corresponds to three types of experience.

Far > There > Non-Experience
Near > Here > Quasi-Experience
With > Here > Real-Experience

The term “Experience” refers to interaction-based experience. If a Subject is far from an Object, the spatial distance between these two determines the experience: there are no action opportunities there. I call this type of experience Non-Experience.

You can find more details in The Attachance Framework (2018) and Thematic Engagement.

The “Digital” Aspect of “Thing”

There is a special type of digital product: Platforms. In the past several years, I have worked on developing several frameworks about digital platforms and developmental platforms in general. You can find more details in Mapping Thematic Space #3: The “Platform” Thematic Space.

From the perspective of the Ecological Practice approach, Platform is a large-scale container. Based on the concept of Container, I coined two related ideas: Network and Platform. The Network refers to the pre-container status which means pieces loose coupling outside the container. The Platform refers to the post-container status which means pieces loose coupling within the super large container. These three ideas form a triad: Network — Container — Platform. I consider the triad as the basic form of collective contexts.

In 2019, I started working on the Platform Ecology project. The first step of the project was developing the pair of concepts of “Platform — Platformba”.

Platform Ecology refers to my vision of applying the ecological practice approach to study Platform-related social practices. I consider it as a knowledge enterprise that could lead to different projects such as the Platform-for-Development framework, Platform as Container, Platform Innovation as Concept-fit, etc.

Platform-ba is a concept for the Platform-for-Development framework. This is the starting point of Platform Ecology. To facilitate discussion, I coined the term Platform-ba (or Platformba) to describe the sum of Containee and Spilling Space for the Platform Ecology project.

Now we can connect the pair of concepts of “Affordance — Supportance” with “Platform — Platformba”. See the diagram below.

The above sections have discussed Affordance and Supportance from other perspectives. This section focuses on applying the concept of “Curativity” to study “Platform”.

In philosophy and mathematical logic, researchers use “mereology” to describe the study of parts and the wholes they form. Though I am also talking about the relationship between the pieces and the whole, what I want to explore is not mereology. My objective is “curating pieces into a meaningful whole” which refers to action, experience, and value. In other words, I care about the practice and activity of curating, not abstract thinking about parts and wholes.

Thus, I coined the new term Curativity to describe my objective. The diagram below shows the third element of Curativity: Container. The basic assumption behind the diagram and the new term is: “In order to effectively curate pieces into a meaningful whole, we need Container to contain pieces and shape them.”

Pieces, Container, and Whole together form a triad which is the basic unit of analysis of Curativity theory. Also, this unit of analysis establishes a new theoretical category at the ontological level. The concept of Curativity indicates three statuses of things:

Things-in-Pieces
Things-in-Container
Things-in-Whole

How to connect it with Platform? We discover two types of actions on Platforms:

Host
Join

Some users of a digital platform could host a project as an environment for some activities. Other users could join the project.

Things-in-Pieces: Users
Things-in-Container: Participants
Things-in-Whole: Project

In this way, the host of a project is a curator. The project is a curating activity.

The above diagram represents the basic model of applying the concept of “Curativity” to study digital platforms. We can find some relevant frameworks for discussing details. For example, SET.

The SET Framework was originally named the Ecological — Activity Hybrid Approach. It was developed from 2017 to 2020 when I worked on several projects which refer to a new type of social action platform.

The name “SET” is inspired by Behavior Settings Theory which is one of the theoretical approaches of Ecological Psychology.

In 2021, I applied the SET framework to study digital whiteboard platforms such as Miro and Milanote. I designed an expanded diagram for my research. This expanded version has three types of environments:

Situational Environment: For example, a Miro board and related events.
Organizational Environment: For example, the team behind the Miro board.
Technological Environment: For example, Miro and other related digital platforms.

You can find more details in The SET Framework.

The “Cultural” Aspect of “Thing”

The above discussion represents a tendency of the development of Thing: from physical thing to digital thing. Now we are going to see the new stop of the track: the mental thing.

Physical thing: Object / Artifact
Digital thing: Platform
Mental thing: Brand

How does a product lead to a brand?

There is a transformation between an Objective Thing and a Mental Thing.

According to Wikipedia, “A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller’s good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and store value as brand equity for the object identified, to the benefit of the brand’s customers, its owners and shareholders. Brand names are sometimes distinguished from generic or store brands.”

This view is only about the perspective of firms. It only cares about the benefit of brand owners.

From the perspective of the Ecological Practice approach, we see Branding as a dynamic process of Curating various Attachances.

Let’s return to the basic model of the Ecological Practice approach. Branding is all about the sum of customers’ experiences with the Product. How do customers get their experiences? They have to live with various containers where the product appears. These containers go beyond the environment of transaction.

Now we can move to the Attachance framework to see the whole journey of “Person — Product” engagement.

A consumer goes through the journey, each time he/she moves between two thematic spaces. Each move indicates a special type of attachance for the Branding activity.

It’s clear that there is a structural tension behind the Branding activity:

Pieces v.s. Whole

While the Branding activity aims to build a meaningful whole of a brand, the source of Branding is various customers’ experiences in various situations.

The Brand owner has to curate various attachance into a meaningful whole. What’s their best strategy?

From the perspective of the Ecological Practice approach, they could take the Supportance of the group of customers. Let’s use Platform as an example. See the diagram below again.

I coined the term Platform-ba (or Platformba) to describe the sum of Containee and Spilling Space for the Platform Ecology project. In a general sense, we can use Brand-ba and Brand in the same way.

A Brand-ba is the social field of a brand’s customers and it contains various activities that are related to the brand.

In this way, we see a dynamic relationship behind the Branding activity. While a brand is owned by a firm, the Brand-ba is developed by all customers. In order to build a great brand, the brand owner have to maintain this dynamic relationship.

Moreover, there is a network of brands and a network of Brand-ba. A brand owner has to develop the uniqueness of the brand in order to keep the Brand-ba’s loyalty.

The Ecological Practice approach uses a concept called “Genidentity” to answer a relevant question: How can a thing keep its uniqueness over time?

As introduced by Kurt Lewin, genidentity is an existential relationship underlying the genesis of an object from one moment to the next.

Though Genidentity was originally developed for discussing the difference between various branches of science and their dynamic development, it is about a “topology of identity” and temporal dynamics from my perspective.

I developed an operational definition for the concept of Genidentity: A thing’s Genidentity is defined by Essential Differences with Situated Dynamics. In this way, we turn a philosophical concept into a practical concept for empirical research.

If we apply the concept of “Genidentity” to study the Branding activity, then we can use the diagram to represent several themes.

There are two typical actions for developing Genidentity.

Call: The Brand Owner has to give a call to consumers and the call should connect the brand and the consumers’ deep life meanings. In other words, the call should activate a consumer’s potential desire to do something such as tell his/her experience with others.
Tell: The consumer actually tells his/her experiences about the brand with others. This action is the foundation of the Brand-ba.

The above diagram also highlights the following several concepts:

Self and Other
Similarities and Differences
Storytelling

Self refers to a potential customer while Other refers to people from the customer’s surrounding environment. Self only can receive the above two types of information from Others, either the firm or other people.

I use the pair of concepts of “Similarities — Differences” for multi-purposes.

The “Similarities — Differences” between a Brand’s stories and a Consumer’s life.
The “Similarities — Differences” between a Consumer’s life and another consumer’s life
The “Similarities — Differences” between a Brand’s stories and another Brand’s stories.

Both the Similarly-oriented strategy and the Difference-oriented strategy work if the story’s content and context are relevant and unique.

The strategy of storytelling could focus on Form, Content, or Both. If the firm can’t offer a different form, then it could offer different content with a different cultural value or others.

The Chobani Flip is an example of the first strategy: Making a difference in Form. They just design a new type of container of yogurt and ask consumers to flip the smaller part in order to pour the topping into the yogurt.

The Make Love Not War shirt is an example of the second strategy: Making a difference in the Content with a cultural value. Consumers buy this T-shirt because they embrace the value behind the text message.

The pair of concepts of “Similarities - Differences” can be used to discuss Genidentity too.

In 2019, I worked on the early version of Platform Ecology and applied the concept of Genidentity to study digital platform design and development.

I used the diagram below to represent a rough idea of the “Platform Genidentity” framework.

What’s Platform Genidentity? I use the concept of Platform Genidentity to describe a process of keeping the uniqueness of a platform within a long-term duration. For example, Google.com (a Search Engine), Wikipedia.org, YouTube.com, these three websites keep their original core design without major changes.

In order to understand the complexity of Platform Genidentity, I developed the following two new concepts:

Platform Core: a basic unit of a platform. For example, a Tweet, a YouTube video page, a Q&A page on Quora, etc.
Platform-ba: a platform-based sociocultural field. For example, YouTube-ba is a YouTube-based sociocultural space. You can find more details here.

As mentioned above, we have an operational definition of the concept of Genidentity: A thing’s Genidentity is defined by Essential Differences with Situated Dynamics.

For Platform Ecology, we need to discover the sources of Essential Differences and Situated Dynamics. I think the sources are Platform Core and Platform-ba. However, they don’t work as a one-to-one mapping relationship. See the above diagram.

In order to build a brand, the brand owner has to make a balance between Similarities and Differences. In the long term duration, a brand needs to keep the essential core of the brand in order to offer consumers a similar experience. In the situational environment, the brand has to offer consumers a fresh experience in order to keep attraction to consumers.

You can find more details in Platform Genidentity: The Movements of Unfolding Uniqueness.

From Individual Actions to Lifesystem

The unit of analysis of the above discussion is individual actions. We highlight the following ten types of actions:

Found
Use
Make
Share
Sell
Buy
Host
Join
Call
Tell

The Ecological Practice approach also offers the Lifesystem Framework which is located at a higher unit of analysis.

The word “Life” is inspired by the term “Lifeworld” from Alfred Schutz while the word “System” is inspired by Anticipatory System Theory.

A Lifesystem is formed by Lifeway and Lifeform

Lifesystem = Lifeway + Lifeform

The diagram below is the basic model of the Lifesystem framework.

The term “Lifeway” is inspired by the ecological psychologist James. J. Gibson’s writing: “The natural environment offers many ways of life, and different animals have different ways of life.” I use the term “Lifeway” to refer to the “human—material” engagement which is related to the physical environment and affordance.

The term “Lifeform” is inspired by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s writing: “It is easy to imagine a language consisting only of orders and reports in battle…And to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life…Here the term ‘language game’ is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity or a form of life.” I use the term “Lifeform” to refer to the “human-human” engagement which is related to the social environment and supportance.

The Lifesystem framework considers the following eight operational concepts:

Actor
Group
Material
Information
Resource
Intention
Result
Reward

The diagram below is the standard model of the Lifesystem Framework.

There are two types of knowledge frameworks: Descriptive and Prescriptive. The descriptive frameworks tend to tell us what the thing is while the prescriptive frameworks tend to tell us how to do it. Researchers tend to use descriptive frameworks to explain what they care about while designers tend to use prescriptive frameworks to guide their design processes.

The Lifesystem framework is descriptive, not prescriptive. However, we can expand the Lifesytem framework at its operational level and adopt other related frameworks to build a toolkit for various product development activities.

You can find more details in Ecological Practice Design: The Lifesystem Approach to Everyday Life Innovation.