Don’t think, just trust in your hands
Japanese tea ceremony is an excellent analogy to an approach to design which focuses on delight and ingenuity. The essence of the Japanese tea ceremony is being truly aware of our present, which is the key to cherish our unique experiences, even when we are doing the same ritual, repeatedly on a daily basis. This is similar to design where feeling is an important tool to connect with our users, which could lead us to discover some unique experiences.
I recently watched a Japanese movie named, ‘Every day a good day’. The movie shows the journey of a Japanese college girl, Noriko, who discovers herself while learning the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, across two decades of her life. It was an extremely layered philosophical thought communicated through an equally complex ritual of Japanese tea ceremony. There are different kinds of tea for different seasons, different utensils used for different occasions and the rituals are extremely rigid but have their own nuances.
It left me thinking about how design is also an extremely layered phenomenon. At one level, it is about problem solving but isn’t it also about achieving a sense of delight, communicating emotions through abstraction of forms, formation of semantics and strategies, etc. But these layers emerge, if we slow down and meditate on them, else it remain just a superficial proposition. Design as a method mostly remains the same but based on the needs and the context it has its own flavour. Empathy on its own remains the same but then why we looking to empathise changes the whole approach. Ideation fundamentally remains the same but depending on how far we can and want to leap forward changes the method.
A more concrete example is a fun team building exercise which we did recently. The task was to pick an emotion felt through a place, in our case we were in a museum. And later all of us had to depict the same emotion in a tangible form, constructed with a common set of art supplies. The twist which brought the “AHAA!!” moment, was that each of us had to guess the emotion picked by others by feeling their creation kept in a covered box. By doing this exercise, the importance of feeling and appreciating the slow discovery of the form is very clear and amazing. As my colleague, Francesca Barrientos, says tacit learning is one which has an “AHAA!!” moment in it. It is a learning experience, when we cannot clearly articulate the learning, but we do implicitly understand it. As mentioned in the movie…
Somethings are quickly understood and somethings take time. The ones which take time, you come to understand little by little.
Most of my tacit learning experiences have been when I had stopped thinking and started going with the flow. Not worrying about the outcome but just being in the moment. It somehow slows down the mind and brings more focus. And as it is said, the opportunities and ideas simply find us on their own when we stop forcing ourself to find them.
In the movie too, tacit learning is beautifully depicted in the first few lessons, when Noriko and her cousin Michiko, learn about this approximately 20 step process of folding fukusa (a napkin for wiping utensils) by Takeda, their Tea Ceremony master. After an internal struggle Noriko finally gets her “AHAA!!” moment and from that day she starts enjoying the rituals of the tea ceremony. This happens only when she rather than memorising each and every detail of every step, goes with the flow. Interestingly she performs her best when she lets her hands experience it and not think about it. Just to give you a better idea, here is a tutorial of folding the fukusa from another video on youtube…
I feel, design to a certain extend is extremely analogous to the practice of Japanese Tea Ceremony. It has its own rituals, rules, guidelines yet carefully, thought-through design comes with a flavour of betterment and delight. A functional design is a necessity, but if done mindfully it brings in a perspective which is unique and thought provoking. And, similar to tea, in design, to achieve it we need to go with the flow. As it says in the movie…
Don’t think, just trust in your hands.
Would love to hear more about your experiences around it…
Have you ever gone with the flow during your design process, not looking for the outcome? How does it feel? Does it change your approach?
