TALE: A Possible Theme called “Possible Discipline”
The Persona — Activity Fit and more ideas
The above picture represents a Possible Theme called “Possible Discipline”.
- Name: Possible Discipline
- Clue: the Persona — Activity Fit and more ideas
- Type: cultural theme
- Contributor: Vinish Garg
- Reference: Curativity Theory, Activity Theory, Configurational Theory
- Related Themes: Possible Personas, Possible Practice
The theme of “Possible Discipline” was inspired by Vinish Garg’s short note about content, design, and strategy. See this post on Linkedin.
I have been thinking about the theme of “Possible Discipline” for a while. If you read the previous article about “Possible Practice”, then you can see a whole picture of a family:
- Possible Practice
- Possible Themes
- Possible Books
- Possible Discipline
- Possible …
This idea echoes my approach “Themes of Practice” and Andy Blunden’s approach “Activity = Concept = Project” which is introduced in my 2020/2021 book Project-oriented Activity Theory.
In a nutshell, my ideas are all about “Thinking/Doing” together. If you have an idea, just do it!
This post aims to share more related ideas about the theme of “Possible Discipline”.
2019: Information Architects’ Challenge
In recent years, new professional domains emerged and grew fast and also disappeared quickly especially web/mobile practice-related domains. For example, Information Architecture (IA) as a professional practice went popular in the mid-1990s and changed in the mid-2020s.
In 2002, the Information Architecture Institute was registered as a nonprofit (501c6) organization. In 2019, their board of directors decided to dissolve the IA Institute as a legal business entity. Before the final announcement, insiders discussed reframing the domain of Information Architecture in order to adopt the change of context.
In 2013, 42 researchers, educators, and practitioners attended a workshop called “Reframing Information Architecture” at ASIS&T Information Architecture Summit in Baltimore, Maryland. Later, they collected papers and published a book for pushing the conversation further. One author suggested reframing Information Architecture as a sub-section under the User Experience umbrella. Then, we see another professional organization: User Experience Professionals Association.
From the perspective of Project-oriented Activity Theory, the dynamics of professional domains can be seen as a process of Concept Competition.
What’s the relationship between “Concept Competition” and “Possible Discipline”?
Some Concepts refer to Disciplines. We can always find some emerging concepts behind some emerging disciplines. In other words, we can research “Discipline Competition” by studying “Concept Competition”.
2022: Maurizio Goetz’s Question
On May 6, 2022, Maurizio Goetz asked me the following question:
How do you make sense of an emergent topic or emergent field?
My answer starts with Project-oriented Activity Theory. The core of the book is the following long article:
You can start from Part 7, especially 7.4 “Concept Competition and Career Development” and 7.5 “Knowledge Development and Domain Formation”.
This topic is one of my favorite topics. Many of my projects are related to knowledge building and development. These projects can be understood as producing knowledge about producing knowledge.
I use “CALL for META” to organize my related projects around the meta-knowledge direction.
My answer is a model of Building Knowledge Enterprise Activity. See the diagram below.
You can find more details in CALL: How to Grow A Knowledge Enterprise.
What’s the relationship between “Building Knowledge Enterprise” and “Possible Discipline”?
There are two different perspectives behind them.
- The “Individual Creative Life” Perspective
- The “Collective Creative Life” Perspective
I used the “Individual Creative Life” perspective to develop the “Building Knowledge Enterprise” model. However, the theme of “Possible Discipline” is framed from the “Collective Creative Life” Perspective.
Can we put these two ideas together?
Yes! We can!
We can use the ARCH model to connect Creators and Supporters. See the diagram below.
You can find more details in ARCH: A Visual Language of Interpersonal Interactions and Collaborative Project Engagement.
2023: The Persona — Activity Fit
The notion of “Persona — Activity Fit” is part of the Persona Dynamics Framework. See the diagram below.
In 2019, I developed a framework called SET which stands for “Social Engagement Theory” for understanding Social Interaction Design.
The notion of “Personas Dynamics” is part of the SET framework. See the diagram below.
The unit of analysis of the SET framework is the pan-interpersonal level.
Traditional social psychological theories and sociological theories tend to use real interpersonal actions or social roles for units of analysis. Inspired by interaction design and digital social practices, I adopted the term “Persona” from the field of User Experience to define a middle entity between Person and Social Role.
- Person
- Persona
- Social Role
In this way, we can research pluralistic social interaction in the age of digital platforms.
Last month, I applied the Persona Dynamics framework to discuss the career development of designers. You can find more details in TALE: A Possible Theme called “Possible Personas”.
What’s the relationship between “Possible Personas” and “Possible Discipline”?
We can focus on the “Persona — Activity” Fit.
What can we do with the idea of “Persona — Activity Fit”?
Let’s detach this mental element from individual actions to attach it to collective practice.
If a group of people shares 1) a particular Persona — Activity Fit, 2) a specific type of Personal — Activity Fit, and 3) the name of the Fit.
Then we can claim that there is a “Possible Discipline”.
Some people use the term “Emerging Discipline”. You can use it too.
Let’s see an example:
In 2013, a group of scholars published a book titled Action Science: Foundations of an Emerging Discipline.
According to the authors:
The emerging field of action science is characterized by a diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches which share the basic functional belief that evolution has optimized cognitive systems to serve the demands of action.
Here we see a “Persona — Activity” Fit!
Activity Theory claims that an Activity is based on its Object which refers to motive. So, “share the basic functional belief” means a motive for an Activity.
On the other side, scholars can do research and write papers about “the basic functional belief”. This refers to “Personas”.
However, a scholar may don’t want to join it if he/she doesn’t believe that “the basic functional belief” could have a brilliant future. So, this is related to his/her “Anticipatory Activity System” which is about “Self, Other, Present, Future”.
Now, we have a model for understanding “Possible Discipline”.
2023: “Life Strategy” and “Possible Discipline”
The Persona Dynamics Framework mentions the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework.
The Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework is inspired by Activity Theory and Anticipatory System theory. It aims to offer an abstract model for understanding “Self, Other, Present, Future”.
While the traditional Activity Theory focuses on “Exploitative Activity”, the AAS framework is more about “Exploratory Activity”. I introduced the AAS framework in my 2022 book (draft) Advanced Life Strategy: Anticipatory Activity System and Life Achievements.
My primary interest is located in the intersection between Knowledge, Creativity, and Adult Development. I roughly use Creative Life to name this focus. It’s clear that I don’t want to develop a general framework about adult development for everyone. I only consider Knowledge Workers and Creators as my target audience.
The Life Strategy Project aims to develop a systematic approach to life strategy for knowledge creators. I adopted the AAS framework as the primary framework for Advanced Life Strategy.
What’s the relationship between “Anticipatory Activity System” and “Possible Discipline”? See the diagram below.
For the life strategy project, Second-order Activity means Life Discovery Activities. First-order Activity means Life Performance Activities.
Life Discovery Activities aim to discover something new, try something for the future, detect possible themes, and Explore Disciplines. In the early phase of Life Discovery, we can try several Possible Disciplines. In the late phase of Life Discovery, we can focus on one Emerging Discipline.
On the other hand, Life Performance Activities echo Established Disciplines. We can focus on running low-risk projects and produce outcomes that are easily perceived by others.
How to explore a possible discipline? One answer is to redefine an established discipline. The following section shares a secret weapon about it.
2023: Erik Stolterman’s Secret Weapon
There is a popular quote about innovation. I am not sure if it was written by Herbert Simon or if it was quoted by him from others.
In 2023, HCI researcher and Design theorist Erik Stolterman gave me a secret weapon for understanding “Possible Discipline”. See his paper about the disciplinary identity of HCI research:
The secret weapon is called Configurational Theory. According to Erik Stolterman:
- Configurational theories constitute unique frames of reference for the objects they describe. Configurational theory commonly focuses on how elements and their relationships constitute a whole. Hillier, a prominent advocate for configurational approaches, writes that architecture can be seen “as fundamentally configurational in that the way the parts are put together to form the whole is more important than any of the parts taken in isolation” (Hillier, 2007, p. 1). A configurational theory emphasizes the composition of elements and their relationships that make up a whole. The composition generates new and different meanings that could not be achieved in isolation.
- Another key aspect of a configurational approach is its emphasis on building theory from the ground up rather than by applying existing theoretical frames of reference, which are imbued with values and meanings from other disciplines. Hillier characterizes the latter approach as biased by the intellectual culture of its original discipline and argues for “remedying this bias towards overly normative theories based on concept borrowing,” and initiating a search, within his field of architecture, for a “genuinely analytic and internal theory” (Hillier, 2007).
- There have been attempts to develop configurational theories in other fields, such as organizational theory (Meyer et al., 1993), policy research (Compston, 2003), information systems, (Sauer et al., 1997) and, perhaps most notably, architecture (Hillier 2007). Why? What happens in these other fields that lead to the explorations of configurational theory as a potential approach? What is lacking in other efforts to build explanatory theories from within using different methods? Are we at a similar point in time in the development of HCI as a discipline?
- One possible answer to these questions is that configurational theories explain phenomena, such as spatial design patterns or the viral spread of ideas, in terms of how a set of component elements relate to each other. These relationships are key to the explanatory power of a configurational theory. Re-arranging elements in a configurational theory, like re-arranging furniture in a room or pictures on a wall, has implications for each element.
- Configurational theory has been applied in different disciplines (Bhola, 1965; Fiss et al., 2013; Hillier, 2007; Schiller, 1938). In most areas, configurational approaches have been applied with the purpose to build internal theories about the field’s object of study in the form of the elements and relationships unique to that discipline. We set out to explore if configurational theory could guide us in developing a more ambitious notion of HCI’s core object of study. Our aim is for this investigation to be relevant to HCI scholars interested in how to describe the discipline and to those concerned with how configurational theory might be a useful analytical tool.
Wow! This a fantastic gift to me!
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:
We can use Activity Theory, Curativity Theory, and Configurational Theory to explore the theme of “Possible Discipline”!
