How Japanese Concepts influenced my Design Thinking

I recently wrote an article on how stoicism informed my design thinking practice. It wasn't the only philosophy to influence my work. Japan fascinated me for quite some time. I learned up some of the language and have practiced Aikido up to a black belt. So there are a few things I picked up along the way...

人間

The Japanese word for person is ningen. It's a unique and beautiful perspective on people.

The first part - nin - means a human being. The second part - gen - stands for space, or in-between. The understanding of a person isn’t distinct and singular. It includes connections and relationships that people form. Meaning, you are not just an individual but also the collection of all interactions you had.

In design thinking, ningen reminds me of the context of a person: A manager is not only an individual, but also his role within the organisation, a node within a network of relations, fulfilling a certain function, a web of interpersonal relationships. The person is composed by others' thoughts and values, not just one's own. I find that ignoring this misses latent needs and pain points. The person isn't really understood. The solution doesn't really fit. 

My takeaway? Always think of a person as the individual plus their context.

 和 - Space for Relations

The Japanese word wa describes the environment, plus the quality of interaction within it.

In translation, wa means harmony. But what it really describes is an awareness of the current relationship in the room. It can be a tension in the air. A warmness. Or coldness. It is the understanding that a space has a quality that influences the types of interactions that happen there. In short, the mood or energy in the room is shaped by the space.

I find this to be super important, especially in short work sessions, sprints or trainings. The lighting, the temperature, the arrangement in the room. All of that can make or break a session. There is a recognition of that in design thinking. We use standing tables and high chairs in team interaction. Do the exact same work session in two different ways: in a standing and a sitting arrangement. It will be quite a different experience. And that’s only the furniture. Think of colors, texture, aesthetics, visual arrangement... 

Addressing Relationships with Space

Teamwork creates friction and stress that must be dealt with. The office is an unsuitable environment to do this. A comfortable lunch area, gaming consoles, beanie bags and mini football tables won’t change this. People are still aware of being inside the office space, inside the company. They still have their mask on.

Also, the space itself is rarely designed for a social purpose. It is just decorated to feel social. But the supposedly light and playful mood feels artificial. This is especially true of corporate settings. Walk into an innovation lab and you can feel whether it's genuine or not.

I like to take a design thinking team out into nature to resolve conflict. It literally clears the air. A small cabin to huddle around the fireplace late at night is the right setting to discuss the feelings and attitudes within the team. Walking out into the cold air, looking up at the stars and sitting around a campfire is the right place to envision the future of a project. 

If you want to have a deep and meaningful conversation with someone, go to a Zen garden. I visited one in Tokio. As I sat down, my attention was pulled by a sound to a vanishing point created by the layering of bushes and trees. The rhythmic sound of a bamboo hitting the rock was hypnotic. Time seemed to warp around us as we sat on the bench. Our breathing slowed down and as one spoke, the other truly listened.

場 - Space for Knowledge

The word ba in Japanese is concerned with the forming and sharing of knowledge. This is what we emphasize in design thinking when we use open spaces for synthesis. Ba is about ensuring the good use of knowledge and experience in a group of people. It is about arranging the environment in a way that allows the easy creation of connections.

To identify needs and pain points, an open space with a long stretch of wall to arrange information helps to gain an overview. If the wall is long enough to force you to walk, you can literally experience a customer journey. Large conference halls, long hallways or the outsides of buildings are great to walk along the information. Thinking about ba, I started favouring large glass surfaces: Wide windows overlooking water or parks. Using chalk markers, you can turn any window into a whiteboard. Shifting focus back and forth from looking out and looking at the window triggers something in people: It signals the team to widen their perspective and open their minds.

Space as a Tool

Wide open offices reflect ba as a principle. With many people sharing a large table, innovation spaces try concentrating the perspectives of different disciplines to create breakthroughs. But space for forming knowledge can take different forms.

I change my environment depending on the interaction I want in a certain process step. In talking about the assumptions and knowledge at the beginning of a project, I like a walking meeting in transition spaces, such as a cafe on a busy street. In interviewing users, I pick an environment with a soothing and quiet setting to build trust, like a quiet park.

To come up with ideas, a very small bar, such as an Izakaya is perfect. It is a very intimate setup as you literally sit shoulder to shoulder. Being a very small space, only a handful of people fit in. It is dimly lit, so you relax as don’t see each other fully and are less afraid to lose face with a crazy idea. The sake helps, too.

所 - Space for Being

Tokoro means location, but it doesn't just describe the site of something. It also describes a state of being. The idea of a place includes all historical and cultural implications of it. So, as with ningen, the context of a place is also included in tokoro.

I wondered what that really meant until I took a trip that explained it to me. There was an island paradise I was trying to reach to have a relaxing week. It took me multiple transports and over a day to get there. Finally on location, I was cold, miserable and had sand flea bites everywhere. I was not in a relaxed state of being. I liked the notion of an island paradise. But the reality of it was the wrong tokoro for relaxation.

Why does a kindergarden feel creative? Why does a university feel intellectual? Why do most government office buildings feel intimidating or energy draining? The tokoro includes the context, not just the spatial design.

Mindspace

So, knowing this, what state of being does an innovation team need? What states of being do we need at different points in the design thinking process? Changing the environment not only helps the building or knowledge or of relationships, but also to change your state of being. But again, it is not the design itself but also the context that is important.

Here is a lesson I drew from this: in creating innovation spaces, leave them as a rough draft. If the tokoro is creativity and development, it needs to be in a state of being, unfinished. It is the team that needs to come in to finish and evolve the design. That way, they will claim ownership and become creative in building it. This notion is also hit upon in make space.

Unfortunately, most innovation spaces I was able to experience were fully developed designs. They were someone's idea of innovation. The result is signalling an appearance of creativity without requiring anyone to come in and create. In some cases, they even explicitly warn people who work there from changing anything about the design.

間 - Space for Breathing

Of this one, I was guilty of by time-boxing people without consideration for any ma. In art and design, ma is known as negative space. More important than the actual space, it's about what isn't there.

Consider the last event you visited. The ma at most events is awful. There is little time to relax and network in between sessions. There is no time at all to reflect and let it all sink in. There is not enough time to sit back and enjoy the meal.

Ma is about the space that isn't filled. It is the freedom to allow for things that are dissimilar to co-exist. It is space for interpretation. It is that void I felt sucking me in at the Zen garden.

You can find the concept in Japanese architecture, but also in art forms like Ikebana. The idea is to create an interruption of something or an absences. It is up to the other person to reconcile the missing part and fill in the gap. Try leaving things unfinished and creating moments of awareness and quiet.

I played with this idea in some presentations by finishing in the middle of it. There was no resolution, no conclusion, it felt like there needed to be more. Doing that allowed for a discussion and questions to arise that otherwise would have not. My biggest learning, however, was to leave space in a schedule. Not breaks exactly, as those are also filled. They are filled with food, drinks, time to check mails, time to talk. Breaks have a purpose.

But what if your schedule had sessions with content and sessions that said: nothing. What would people do with that nothing? Would they see them as breaks? Would they fill them with content of their own? What I found was this: the ma triggers a discussion.

心 - Space for Unity

Finally, a concept that anime fans and martial artists alike might recognize: kokoro. Usually this is translated as mind, heart and soul, but the word rather refers to a unity between mind, body and spirit. In English, when things are connected by "and", this implies a separation between the various objects. The unity implied by kokoro is more like a logical conjunction.

The reason this is important: kokoro refers to the play of distance between people. When I was practicing Aikido and Kendo, kokoro-no-maai referred to the mental distance between two opponents. It described the relationship between physical distance, reaction time and attentiveness. The idea was, if you felt the momentary gap in attention of your opponent and adjust the physical distance accordingly, you would gain an advantage.

When we are building empathy in design thinking, we are bridging the gap between us and the people we are designing for. But kokoro is more. It is the notion that we are part of one system: Designer and User intertwined. Buddhists talk about the interconnectedness of all beings and about compassion. Xin in China and Hrdaya in India refer to the same concept.

If you simply apply empathy, you can use insight into people to create addictive, harmful products. But if you apply kokoro, you will focus on solutions with the intent of well-being to everyone and everything involved. It refers to entire network of interdependent organisms part of our planet.

Applying this to design thinking projects, sprints or short work sessions required for me to shift my perspective. I had to see where the particular practice fit within the organisation and its business. Thinking about the interdependences helped me to design the particular practice in interaction with the system.

The Conclusion

I think there are notions in various cultures that can be quite useful in practicing design thinking - or other approaches for that matter. Most of those concepts are easily overlooked as they seem to be a peculiarity that we don't think about or consider in depth.

I recently got to know a design researcher on LinkedIn who told me about his experience in Botswana. According to Pierce, there is no word for innovation.

“The reason why the term so difficult to translate, is because a Motswana don’t train to innovate, they train to preserve…."

I think that might capture something very powerful for innovation teams: the structure of human language shows and influences how individuals conceptualise their world. Think of that next time you are trying to introduce a design thinking practice somewhere.

If anything was unclear or you'd like to know how to apply it in your design thinking practice, let me know in the comments. I'd also love to hear what concepts, values and ideas others have taken into their own practice.

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I have helped people throughout Europe and Asia to successfully introduce, build, manage, and operate design thinking practices.

To discover how I can help you personally to learn design thinking practices or help you implement and scale them throughout your organisation, get in touch with me today.

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