Design is generally understood and perceived as something that stimulates a person’s consciousness. Of the senses that govern consciousness, however, those stimuli that appeal to our sense of sight are the most pronounced and act as an incentive for choosing or buying things. It is true that design gives rise to the stimuli associated with the incentive to choose or buy objects, and that it drives industry and the economy of consumption. At the same time, when we think about the usage of an object, individuals are not conscious of the object when they are using it, nor do they really know just how they are using it. That is to say, it is also true that people are involved with objects and environments unconsciously.
When people are unconsciously involved with objects and environments, things are at their most natural and there is no awkwardness. It is when we become too conscious of something that the situation starts to go haywire and we make mistakes in handling an object. In an unconscious state, people as physical entities try to align themselves with objects, or with the situation or environment presenting itself at that time. So if we carefully observe unconscious, natural, flowing actions – including our own – then I think we can perceive the pronounced relationships from these actions.
There was a particular moment when I realized that design reconciles people, objects and environments, that design is not just about creating shapes but also about relationships.
This is precisely what comprehensive interaction design is, where no distinctions are made between hardware (equipment and facilities) and software (know-how and experience). There are times when the smooth, unconscious flow of actions/behaviours involved with using something is interrupted by one thing or another; it could also be said that this is a stimulus that acts on the consciousness. Creating a catch in this flow of actions/behaviour is also design, but it must be a sublime joke or art. I believe that it cannot be something that causes a catch in the smooth flow of actions, nor something that is in discord with the environment. This catch may also be a break in the form of something, an expression of the artist’s ego or personality, or excessive embellishment.
From the expectation that design yields a stimulus to the conscious mind, designs that have no catch might at first glance seem boring, insipid. But this means the design in question has blended in with the environment and with actions/behaviours; it also realizes the shared joy of people and objects having become “natural”.
I am very interested in the American cognitive psychologist James Gibson’s research into ‘affordance’. Affordance is not a stimulus; it refers to the value that an environment affords people in a given situation. We can then define people continuously gaining affordance from an environment as ‘action’. Observation connected to design ideas means discovering the kind of noticeable affordance people attain under a particular set of circumstances, such as hanging one’s jacket on the back of a chair or putting your hands on the desk when you stand up. The position of your hands under those conditions is a noticeable affordance. Putting it another way, it is ‘the act of doing’ under those particular circumstances.
The act of sitting was around before the chair came into existence. A rock or fallen tree in a particular place are types of affordance, affording the act of sitting naturally in those particular circumstances. Even after the chair came into existence, it is possible to see individual choices for sitting all around us. It may be an aluminium suitcase at an airport or train station, a bale of hay on a farm, the stump of a large tree or a wad of felt. Or it may be leaning against a marble sculpture while waiting for someone. For those choosing to sit under these kinds of circumstances, there are materials or structures that make sitting possible, or that allow sitting. Given a particular set of circumstances, everyone chooses a particular object or material as the natural thing on which to sit. What is chosen is not a chair; but this group of works, entitled ‘Chair’ is something that expresses this noticeable relationship, giving it the shape of a chair. It is irrefutable that Vitra is the greatest chair manufacturer in the world; the fact that Vitra named these ‘things to sit on’ – which are hard to define both as chairs and as works of art – makes ‘Chair’ very significant. The shape of these ‘things to sit on’ is very symbolically chair-like.
Given a particular set of circumstances, people typically engage in the same behaviours. I believe it is best to design things that do not interfere with these natural noticeable behaviours. I think this also characterizes the traditional Japanese approach to creating things. You could also say that these behaviours, these objects, are ‘normal’ or ‘common sense’, so that we may say, ‘Well, at times like that you’d normally sit there, right’. The only thing that can impede people’s common sense, normal behaviours is man’s conscious intentions; the best choices are made without thought.
Naoto Fukasawa
