Bad habits and biases, a newbie’s observations on design thinking in Japan (Pt 4): Learning, building and the art of the unspoken
What working in a completely different culture made me realise about my own behaviour.
Introduction
I moved to Japan six months ago and it’s been a continuous education that has grown and changed me and my world views. During the first few months I was invited to observe training sessions that focused on teaching design thinking to beginners — these were adults in a large company with little or no design experience. It was a brilliant experience. I implicitly understood the content because I have taught this topic to multiple students, colleagues and clients, but because I couldn’t understand the spoken words, I had to focus on the physical behaviours and interactions of the students and teachers. This led to new insights, some familiar to me, some from a fresh point of view, and some completely new to me. All of them will help me become a better teacher.
I decided to share these observations and insights with others, but please no hate mail; this is my opinion and only based on observations of a small sample — not to be taken as a sweeping generalisation of a country and its people. I also expect to change and develop these ideas and my viewpoint the longer I spend here and the more I learn, but there is a usefulness to observation made with the naivety of a newcomer that I wanted to capture and share.
Thank you for reading, I am not sure who will find this useful or even interesting but the audience I had in mind when writing was the person who wants to start working in design in Japan or to work with Japanese clients for the first time. I will state again that these workshops were with people who had no design experience, were complete beginners and not clients.
I began writing this and realised it’s a bit long to read in one go (TL/DR), So I am serving it up in more manageable bites.
Part 1: Trust and the importance of clear structure and instruction
Part 2: Playfulness, balance and managing group dynamics
Part 3: The tangibility of learning
Part 4: Learning, building and the art of the unspoken
Sensei vs Teacher
People listen and pay close attention to what each other says, and this goes double for the person teaching or instructing — expect intense focus and respect. However, as an instructor you must ensure participants have more room and encouragement for independent thought or you will get a precise reflection of what you have demonstrated.
The first time you make a joke, you may have to tell people that you were joking — everyone will then laugh politely, but you will have set expectation that it’s okay to have fun.
Japanese schooling (particularly for language) teaches that if you are not perfectly correct, you are wrong, you don’t get points for trying. It’s important to show that design thinking doesn’t require perfection — it requires participation and collaboration. Typically, I would prepare well-designed and laid-out posters and templates for session, but here, handwritten templates and posters are great as teaching aids; showing artefacts that are less than perfect helps set expectations. However, this doesn’t mean you should skimp on the thinking and planning part of your preparation!
It’s pretty difficult to elicit feedback from participants; they are reluctant to reveal what they don’t know or understand. There are ways to address this by removing the need to speak or draw direct attention. For example, incognito online feedback tools work well, as well as the less technical, writing questions on a Post-it and anonymously putting it up on the wall after each segment. People will often wait until a break and then individually ask you something (this is how it works in the school system here), so set expectations by saying “it’s important that the answers to questions can be heard by everyone so that we can all benefit from the information”. This works well, as collective benefit is a good reason to do something in almost any situation.
I also observed that participants were not asked to raise their hands to answer a question but to simply raise their face. This lowering of the interaction barrier helps but don’t expect many direct questions; a whole day session with 25 people who asked about 10 questions (in total for the entire day), was considered to be a ‘very chatty’ class.
It’s a great place to build consensus
I noticed and discussed with others behavior that leads me to believe Japanese teams are excellent at building consensus. It’s done early in the design process through sharing. People actively want to understand each other, spend time doing this and ask clarifying questions to ensure better understanding. It’s not like Europe or Australia, where people often focus on waiting for their voice to be heard, rather than listening to each other.
This means divergent stages of design can take more time, as extra discussion is required to help people understand each other. Conversely, convergent stages are much faster (think two or three times quicker) as unanimity has been already reached within a group.
Reading the air — the art of the unspoken
Japanese is a minimal language with high context and there is an art to interpreting what is being said (or not said). For example, if my neighbour’s child practiced piano at night and it was disturbing me, I would simply say to the parents “It’s wonderful that your son is improving as a pianist”, the music would stop. The unspoken implication here is that their child is not great at piano and it’s annoying me!
This linguistic subtlety does not make it easy when trying to understand what people actually mean. It’s not just foreigners who experience this difficulty, so using colour and symbolism can help capture the unspoken.
For example:
Using a rose, bud and thorn metaphor, three people tell me they are busy:
Person 1 says “I am busy” and what they mean is ‘I am overwhelmed on my project and I am very tired’. This would be a thorn (negative) and use a blue Post-it.
Person 2 says “I am busy” and what they mean is ‘my project has so many opportunities and I am excited about this’. This would be a rose (positive) and use a pink Post-it.
Person 3 says “I am busy” and what they mean is ‘I have so much to do on my project and I really need more support and help to know what to focus on for the best outcomes’. This would be a bud (opportunity) and use a green Post-it.
When teaching this activity to new design thinkers, the example above was acted out, with participants given the correct colour Post-it with what they should say written on it. They were then asked to read it out loud, the first time each person stating just “I am busy” and not the second sentence, the instructor asked the group if they had heard this said — most people nodded.
The second time the participants were asked to state “I am busy” then to read the second sentence of what they meant by this. The teacher then asked the rest of the group to raise their hand if they had experienced this type of unspoken communication and she raised her own hand too. I watched the group smile and nod in agreement. It was obvious to everyone why we would use the colours and metaphor to capture what people said.
Japan may make an art of the unspoken but many cultures suffer from not meaning what they say or indirect implication that is open to interpretation, but it took a workshop where I couldn’t understand a single thing that was said to truly grasp the power of the unspoken. Design thinkers everywhere use methods that allow you to capture and communicate more meaning than simply what people say. After all, understanding people is the heart of design thinking.
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I hope you have enjoyed reading my newbie observations about Design Thinking teaching and workshops in Japan. This series will be published weekly.
Thank you to the teachers and participants who generously allowed me to join their learning. I apologise if I have misrepresented you in any way in this article, and for inflicting my terrible Japanese on you. Also to my patient colleagues from many places who have read, critiqued and corrected my writing over a far too long period; thank you. All the mistakes are certainly mine.
ありがとうございました
