TALE: Service as Lifesystem

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TALE500

13 min readFeb 21, 2023

The Ecological Practice Approach to Service Thinking

In the past ten days, I worked on a new series of possible themes which aim to connect my theoretical approaches with Product-centered Business Development.

Today I am going to discuss a new possible theme called “Service as Lifesystem”.

Product-centered Business Development

Business is a large field of social practice, I only focus on Product-centered Business Development activity.

It is more about Startups, Founders, Products, User Experience, Design, Creativity, Ideas, etc. It is less about Enterprise, Management, Venture Capital (VC), Initial Public Offering (IPO), Merger and Acquisition (M&A), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), etc.

These two are two different worlds.

In fact, I worked in the second world from 2001 to 2008. I have over twenty years of work experience which can be divided into three stages: the creative stage, the strategic stage, and the innovative stage. During the creative stage (before 2001), I worked for the advertising and media industry as a creative copywriter and designer. At the strategic stage (from 2001 to 2008), I worked for pre-IPO stage enterprises as a business strategist and fundraising consultant. At the innovative stage (after 2008), I worked on making brand-new digital tools and platforms as a researcher and designer.

Before 2014, I spent most of my spare time on digital nonprofit communities as a digital activist. From 2014 to 2015, I transformed my focus from nonprofit activities to theoretical learning. Since then, I have been spending most of my spare time learning ecological psychology, creativity research, and other related subjects.

2014–2020: Ecological Psychology and Creativity Research
2014–2018: Action Science, Activity Theory, and Cognitive Science
2018–2019: Practice Theory, HCI, Strategy and Work
2020: Social Theory, Social Media, Information Systems and Platform

The journey of connecting THEORY and PRACTICE is so amazing! Eventually, I wrote 18 books (drafts) from 2018 to 2022.

This year, I decided to return to the field of business. The Series “Product Engagement” is the new beginning.

The above themes are about Business, Products, Ideas, and People. Today I am going to discuss a new possible theme about Service.

The Notion of “Service Thinking”

I use the notion of “Service Thinking” to refer to some thoughts about the concept of “Service”. For example:

There are two types of thoughts behind “Service Thinking”:

Ontological level: how to define the concept of “Service”?
Epistemological level: how to understand the “Service” from a particular approach or perspective?

You can find more details in Concept Dynamics: An Ontological Discussion about “Service”.

Today I am going to offer two ideas at both two levels:

Ontological level: “Service” as “Taking Intended Supportance”
Epistemological level: The Lifesystem framework for understanding “Service as Business”

In 2022, I connected “SET (Structured Engagement Theory)” with Developmental Service Design. You can find more details in The SET Framework [Hybrid Approach].

This article will focus on the concept of “Supportance” and the Lifesystem framework. Both two things are part of the Ecological Practice approach which is inspired by Ecological Psychology and other theoretical resources.

“Service” as “Taking Intended Supportance”

People tend to understand the concept of “Service” from the perspective of ecological theories. I am going to offer a new perspective by adopting the Ecological Practice Approach which is inspired by Ecological Psychology.

What’s “Supportance”? I published The Concept of Supportance: An Ecological Approach to Social Support and Beyond on March 12, 2021. The article started with the picture below.

Two women are standing on the beach by the sea, carrying a big picture frame. It is a normal sense. How can I use it for theoretical development?

Let’s consider it as a minimal collective activity. There are at least three people here, the two women carrying the frame, and a photographer taking the picture. It is worth noting that any one of these three people is an indispensable component of the activity. Without the photographer, no one came to take this picture. If there is only one woman, she can’t carry such a big picture frame, thus this shooting activity — taking such a specific photo — can’t be accomplished.

Usually, the story I described could lead readers to the notion of ‘Social Support.’ 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.

The concept of Supportance refers to potential supportive action possibilities offered by the social environments. 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.

To be honest, I didn’t think about “Service” when I was working on the concept of “Supportance” in March 2021. Now we can use the concept of “Supportance” to understand the concept of “Service”. See the diagram below.

Let’s look at the definition of “Supportance”:

The concept of Supportance refers to potential supportive action possibilities offered from a social environment.

Moreover, 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, it focuses on the transformation between Challenge and Response. Phase 3 is Curation, which focuses on the transformation between the Individual and 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.

If we apply the above Supportance Framework to discuss “Service”, then we can consider “Service” as the “Actualization of Intended Supportance”.

The Affordance — Supportance Cycle

The Ecological Practice approach also uses the concept of Affordance to understand “Products”, especially material things. You can find more details in TALE: A Possible Theme called “Product as Thing”.

If we put Affordance and Supportance together, we can use the “Affordance — Supportance” Cycle to understand the dynamics of transformation between Products and Services. See the diagram below.

In business development, we can see two types of problems and solutions from the above diagram.

Problem 1: The Lack of Affordances
Solution 1: Supportances as an Alternative

If a material product or a technical product doesn’t offer a particular Affordance, some users can offer a Supportance to other users by supporting them manually. See the example below.

George Nurijanian perceived several problems with using Substack for Advanced Browsing.

Normal Browsing: you find a post and read it. This is the normal logic of the “newsletter” category because it is defined for Updating.
Advanced Browsing: however, some professional readers tend to jump from Normal Browsing to Advanced Browsing. They want to Read the whole archive!

Though many Newsletter services offer archives for writers and readers, they don’t spend energy to optimize the user experience of using archives.

George Nurijanian manually curated a Notion database that indexes all of Lenny’s newsletter posts. In this way, other users can discover Lenny’s newsletter by topics. You can find more details about this story in Creative Action: The Affordance — Supportance Cycle (a short note).

Should we consider George Nurijanian’s support as a Service? Yes.

Problem 2: The limit of Supportance
Solution 2: Affordances as an Alternative

Can George Nurijanian offer the same Supportance on 1000 newsletters? Yes, he could do it. However, we see the limit of Supportance in the new situation.

The new solution is obvious. We could search for or develop a new technologic product as an alternative to the particular supportance.

Service as Lifesystem

The above discussion is located at the “actions” level. In the context of business, we see Service as a system. At the “system” level, the Ecological Practice approach uses the Lifesystem framework.

Five years ago, my son joined a skate learning program at a local ice skating rink. Thus, I had a good opportunity to watch the program as a participant. When my son stood on the ice on the first day, he didn’t feel uncomfortable. I thought that this should be normal. However, I was wrong.

One day, a new class started. A child cried loudly when he stood on the ice. He wanted to escape from the ice. Her mother grabbed his body and pushed him towards the teacher. The child fell to the ice and cried even worse.

This is the defining movement for me. I realized this is a great opportunity of practicing ecological observation. I started taking pictures and collecting documents. Eventually, I developed a framework to model ice skating and other social practices. The framework is named Lifesystem.

The above diagram is the basic model of the Lifesystem framework. A Lifesysteme has two parts:

Lifeway: the “human — material” engagement
Lifeform: the “human-human” engagement

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 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 social environment and supportance.

The pair of concepts of “Lifeway — Lifeform” was developed in 2019 when I was working on the book Curativity: The Ecological Approach to General Curation Practice. In 2020, I developed the concept of “Supportance” and the “Affordance — Supportance” hierarchical loops.

The above diagram presents my design for the “Affordance — Supportance” hierarchical loops. Why do I emphasize the distinction between natural environments and social environments? 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 remotely present by adopting emerging communication technologies.

The Lifesystem framework considers the “Lifeway — Lifeform” hierarchical loop and the “Affordance — Supportance” hierarchical loop as a whole system that defines a new unit of analysis.

Based on the “Lifeway — Lifeform” hierarchical loop, I identified several operational concepts and developed a framework. See the diagram below.

I used the pair of concepts of “Lifeway — Lifeform” as a principle to separate “Subject-Object” and “Enter—Exit” into eight operational concepts.

Subject: Actor and Group
Object: Material and Information
Enter: Intention and Resource
Exit: Result and Reward

I also developed a typology of Lifesystem. See the diagram below.

Situated Lifesystem
Skilled Lifesystem
Stable Lifesystem
Scalable Lifesystem

Using these four types of Lifesystems, we can apply the Lifesystem framework to discuss various social structures. Let’s use Ice Skating as an example of Lifeway and discuss four types of Lifesystems.

Situated Lifesystem

The characteristics of a Situated Lifesystem are minimal time scale and minimal space scale. For example, a kid occasionally skates for fun. It is not a routine such as a learning program that has a planned schedule. The Lifeform of the Situated Lifesystem is very simple.

Skilled Lifesystem

The characteristics of a Skilled Lifesystem are a short time scale and a small spatial scale. It is a person-centered routine practice with a clear goal of improving skills. For example, a kid joins a skating learning program. The lifeform of the Skilled Lifesystem is more complex than Situated Lifesystem, however, its social complexity is still low.

Stable Lifesystem

The characteristics of a Stable Lifesystem are a long time scale and a big spatial scale. While the above two types of Lifesystems adopt the person-centered perspective, Stable Lifesystem moves to the institution-centered perspective. For example, there is a business entity behind the local ice skating rink. If we choose this type of Lifesystem for our research, then the primary member of the Group should be the owner and managers of the local ice skating rink.

Scalable Lifesystem

The characteristics of the Scalable Lifesystem are a large time scale and a large spatial scale. It is usually not restricted by the geographical environment. It involves complex and diverse social operations. For example, Figure skating is a typical competitive sport. Figure skaters compete at various levels from beginner up to the Olympic level (senior) at local, regional, sectional, national, and international competitions. Figure skating involves performance, media communication, professional judgment, business development, etc.

These four types of Lifesystems are not isolated but connected together as a network of social practice.

You can find more details in Lifesystem: Modeling Ice Skating and Other Social Practices.

Developmental Service Design

Last year, I edited a book titled Ecological Practice Design: The Lifesystem Approach to Everyday Life Innovation.

The name of the book is a concept curation of six concepts. Each concept refers to a special meaning.

Ecological: It refers to the original source of the Ecological Practice Approach approach: Ecological Psychology.
Practice: It refers to a major theoretical resource of the Ecological Practice Approach: Activity Theory and social practice theories in general.
Design: It refers to a social practice of making something new creatively.
Lifesystem: It refers to the Lifesystem Framework.
Approach: It refers to a knowledge enterprise that contains theoretical concepts, operational concepts, frameworks, methods, etc.
Everyday Life Innovation: It refers to the innovation of improving the quality of individual daily life.

The book is a general introduction to the Lifesystem framework and the Ecological Practice approach. You can find more details in Ecological Practice Design (Book).

This year I am going to focus on Developmental Service Design.