Try envisioning design as water. Water is indispensable to human life, connecting us to our environments in visible and invisible ways. It can cause disasters like tsunamis (and so can design when it is uncalled for or when it tries to add nonexistent value), but it can also materialize as a rainbow, radiant in the light of the sun. Just as water makes every phenomenon possible, design is an essential component of every human endeavor. - Taku Satoh
When most people think about design, they are actually thinking about ornated objects that must be beautiful and extraordinary. In fact, design exists everywhere in our dailiy lives. Enabling travelers to move smoothly around an airport terminal with easy to understand directional infographics and traffic control devices is a design problem. Product placement in supermarket shelves is yet another design issue that merchants pay a hefty sum to solve. Design is so commonplace that Taku Satoh, a renowned Japanese designer thinks its major purpose is to connect people and things together, enabling users to freely create their own relationships with the product.
Decrying the “look at me” or “it must be used this way” approach, Satoh explains why the “just enough” philosophy (which is deeply rooted in Japanese asethetics and history) is better in the short but focused book Just Enough Design (“hodo-hodo no desain” in Japanese).
This book is not just useful for designers who want a glimpse of Japanese design philosophy or people who are interested in Japanese culture, but anyone who’s responsible for product design and user experience (e.g., product managers, business planners, customer experience professionals) will definitely pick up a thing or two from it.
What is good design?
Tracing back his “just enough” asethetics to the Japanese history of living modestly and honoring everyday beauty, Satoh distills the principles of good design as the followings,
Leave space for user to explore different ways of using it. Just like Lego bricks or furoshiki, instead of mandating a single way of usage, it should allow the user to freely explore its relationship with the object and use it as desired in multiple ways.
Open the possibility for repurpose after the product’s destined life span is up. For example, the whisky bottle that Satoh designed for Nikka can have a second life as food storage. It’s only because the bottle was initially designed with reuse in mind, inviting its users to think of possibilities beyond containing liquor, that its future usage is warranted. Had it been designed like other liquor bottles that screams assertively “this is a whisky”, it might not be suitable in other contexts and end up being disposed of. Similarly, the Mizkan vinegar bottle Satoh designed finds a second life as a refined vase, simply because it leaves enough space (or Ma in Japanese asethetics) for the user to contemplate its usage.
photo credit: Mizkan vinegar bottle designed by Taku Satoh, from the book Just Enough Design published by Chronicle BooksBeing minimal and non intrusive. The object or system does what it is supposed to do very well and not cross boundary (e.g., a refrigerator that cools 24 hours a day without screaming for attention with flashy curves and colorful handles/facades, something that is not relevant to its core function). I think this is pretty hard to achieve in this era when daily commodities that are very similar are trying to distinguish from each other not by product excellence, but by bells and whistles that can be tagged on.
is simple and approachable versus over-decorated. Like Satoh’s Meiji milk carton, it is easy to be understood by everyone without having a “designer flare”.
For Satoh, design itself doesn’t have a standalone value. Only when it enables the formation of connections and relationships can it be deemed valuable. In other words, value is a subjective concept that can only be created when users relate to the object and find a purpose in using them. It is plausible that a product designer can claim to “create value”. So in our everyday life, something that we might deem so mundane and relegate to the background as a free flowing airport terminal is a highly valuable design. Yet we often pass by such designs without a second look or feel any awe at its efficacy.
What makes a good designer?
Drawing from his long career, Satoh explains that a good designer has a supple mind without ego or any preconception when walking into a problem. Instead of imposing a signature style on everything he sees, the designer is flexible and objective with each situation and comes up with a solution that best fits it. To sum up, a designer is not an artist expressing his/her personality, but rather an objective and creative problem solver, always prioritizing his/her clients.
A good designer is as agile as a good surfer (an analogy I drew from the surfing experience of Satoh). Sometimes we forgo logical thinking and try to force our will on what’s going to happen. Instead, always position ourselves to respond and use our accumulated skills to intuitively react to the surf and rise above the situation.
Relating to Japanese culture
This analogy of design to water (quoted in the opening of this post) reminds me of the be like water teaching in Tao Te Ching, made famous by the martial artist Bruce Lee. Water is formless, that’s why it can take up any shape. When we don’t have any preset expectation, we are more objective to what we see and can understand a situation more thoroughly. Drawing from the design examples in the book, we can see that both the furoshiki and byobu screen (room divider) exhibit this quality. They both can be extended to multiple uses depending on the context they are in. When not needed, they can be folded away, taking no space. I also see this philosophy in the washitsu (Japanese room) in which the space assumes no specific purpose, and can be arranged according to the need of its owner. Not only can a room be repurposed again and again, it can also expand and join other rooms by removing wooden sliding doors, forming a much bigger space. This flexibility is truly unique to Japanese architecture.
Satoh’s proposed asethetics also resonates with the Mingei (folk art) movement led by Yanagi Soetsu in the early 20th century, who proposed that a beautiful object is one that is well-made and serving its purpose well. Yanagi celebrated anonymous shokunin (craftsmen, not self-proclaimed artists) who dedicates his/her whole life in refining their craft and creating highly functional objects. He cherished the utilitarian rather than the exclusively built. I was also reminded of the book The Forgotten Japanese: Encounters with Rural Life and Folklore written by folklore scholar Miyamoto Tsuneichi and reviewed in my post. It chronicled the hidden side of Japan in the early 20th century, putting the spotlight on the common, unglittering and everyday life. It was nothing glamorous like what you would see in Tokyo today, but how villagers being resourceful to live a life as best as they could.
Takeaways for daily life
To sum up Satoh’s philosophy as merely “function over form” is an oversimplification. Rather, he goes much deeper than that. Keeping an objectively distance from the context, and realizing that the users not the creators produce the ultimate product value is quite a revelation.
Satoh also highlights the importance of design in our everyday life so that we shouldn’t relegate as some stylized tasks that are afar and controlled by a specific group of professionals. Rather, we are responsible for a lot of the designs in the world. Where to place a table so that our family can enjoy a healthy and fulfilling meal is a design we can tackle. Similarly, how to schedule our day so that we can live our lives purposely is a design we need to own up. Extracting the lessons he shared, instead of just seeing the beauty created by people around us, but we can also have a more active and conscious role in designing a life that is more fulfilling and suitable for ourselves.
I also find his emphasis on having a supple mind a good attitude to adopt in this VUCA era. Needless to say, agility is the top skill necessary to survive during turbulent times. Even when everything appears to be stable after the storm, being flexible and not held hostage by ego or a preset personality or expectation expands our possibilities and potentials beyond what we can perceive. Having a signature style limits our options. This is because when we say “I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like x”, then x and everything remotely linked to x are automatically excluded from your life. This is somehow akin to limiting your growth with a fixed mindset. Letting go of our wants (whether for a particular object or situation to manifest), and instead doing what we should for the current moment, we might achieve freedom from the self/ego that has been restricting us for a long time.