by Yoko Akama
Akama, Y. 2012. 'A 'way of being' in design practice: zen and the art of being a human-centred practitioner', Design Philosophy Papers, Vol. 1.
Design’s attempts to address social, ethical and environmental concerns of our time have often been marred by theory... more
Design’s attempts to address social, ethical and environmental concerns of our time have often been marred by theory generated by well-meaning scholars who have imposed hard-line definitions and models of what it means to be an ‘ethical designer’. These arguments abstract values and impose ideological and political positions that designers can find difficult to apply in their daily practices. It is not as simple as prescribing the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ values for designers to have and translate them through design. Whatever values there are, those values need to matter to people who care about them enough to translate them into action . Values are not impersonal. They cannot be detached and be subsumed under a more universal value or comparable importance. The paper opens with a critique of this prescriptive approach to highlight the reasons for why ethical design remains stuck in a rut. I then move to discuss more deeply, the close relationship between being ethical and being a human-centred practitioner in design. In doing so, I critique common notions of human-centred design that gives it an ergonomic, human-factors emphasis, or its ‘do-gooder’ side that is associated with humanitarian design. Instead, I offer an alternative framework for human-centred design based on the Japanese ethical concept woven into what it means to be human.
The Japanese term for ‘human being’ is ningen (人間), composed of two characters for ‘person’ (人), and ‘between’ (間). The Japanese understanding of human as in-betweenness, etymologised by ‘between person’, situates it as a relational being. This is the central framework for my notions of ‘self’ and being ‘human’ . This concept of human is strikingly different from major Western philosophies that emphasises ‘anthropos’ or ‘homo’, denoting the individual. Being human-centred is criticised for perpetuating an anthropocentric position , further contributing to humanity’s self-centredness and environmentally destructive behaviour. The profound ethical difference of conceiving humans as detached and in isolation, compared to the Japanese concept of human as relational in-betweennes, is argued by one of the most significant Japanese philosophers of the twentieth century, Tetsuro Watsuji . He was influenced by hermeneutics, phenomenology, Zen Buddhism and the Japanese indigenous spirituality of Shinto. In his book Rinrigaku, ethics in Japan, Watsuji is critical of Western philosophy (Heidegger and many others ) that emphasises the individual concept of self and the locus of the ethical problem pertaining to the consciousness of the individual. The paper dives deeply into Watsuji’s ethical framework in explaining the ningen ‘between person’ that is significant to my definition of being human-centred. I attempt to combine the Eastern philosophy with the West by bringing in a selection of other philosophers such as Goethe, Bortoft and Merleau-Ponty that have resonance with the argument constructed. There is nothing to be gained from East-West dualism or exoticism, as it locks down discourse. Although these Eastern and Western philosophies that I draw upon have not, until now, directly engaged with each other in the discourse of design , they have many valuable overlaps that I would like to share in this paper.
The relational association located in the betweenness, Watsuji argues, to be human is to shift and change continually – it is undergoing a process of constant transformation. The transformation of a designer to being a human-centred practitioner is achieved in relation to others. This connection between self and others (including people, animals, objects and environment) is essential in positioning and embedding oneself in the world. The transformative process is more than cognitive learning or professional development – it is in fact a process of self-awareness that comes from continually reflecting on our activity, our behaviour and how we are with others. This is reflective practice. Though in contrast to reflection and reflective practice that is grounded in critical theory , I explore this by incorporating aspects of wholeness from Goethe’s phenomenology and embodied perception by Merleau-Ponty . I argue the importance of being a reflective practitioner as the first step in being able to fully understand ourselves, our relationship and our connection to others. This pursuit of self-awareness, through reflective practice, is the central argument of this paper of being a human-centred practitioner. Through weaving together these various frameworks, I discuss the cyclical journey of transformation of the self where reflection is experienced in an immersive, affective, embodied way.
True, long-term sustainable change towards building and creating an ethical practice cannot come from being told what to design or choosing the ‘right’ values to adopt. Neither does it come from simply undertaking community-based projects, taking up a social cause or deploying participatory methods. To manifest and practise human-centredness is not a switch one can flick ‘on’ when you are in the design studio at 9am and ‘off’ when you’re leaving work. Instead, I stress the importance of human-centredness manifesting through all facets of our lives that involves engaging in the in-betweenness with others. It requires active creation and the practising of practice that is truly human-centred and aware – aware of oneself, of others and the world we live in. It is a day-to-day application and manifestation, but it is not merely a mechanical repetition. The significance of this being a practice is that it is a transformation and evolution of ourselves in bringing an awareness and embedded-ness to what we do everyday. It is a path (Tao) we each carve our ‘way of being’ in the world.
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