TEA FUTURES : 3 reasons why you should learn UX design from a tea master
Whether you are an experienced designer or an enthusiastic design student, user experience is a new skill and mindset that will boost your career as a designer.
For the more business minded, it is not a coincidence if successful startups such as Airbnb and Etsy have always valued and invested their time in the UX design of their service.
But did you know that 400 years from now, a modest tea master in Japan created a concept very similar to what we call UX design?
Sen-No-Rikyu was a tea master from the Sengoku era and served two famous lord as their tea master. He is famous for being the founder of the current form of the tea ceremony “Cha-No-Yu”, which also became the foundation for Japanese design principles.
Be Simple
Simplicity is at the core of the tea ceremony. Sen No Rikyu got rid of all the ornaments from the tea set, which was then highly decorated to display the wealth of the owner. By reinventing the bowls to be simpler, there was a lot more focus on the tea itself as well as the time you spend in the tea room. But not only that, simplicity also brought functionality where he coincidentally created a new material which would keep the tea warm for a longer period of time, in his pursue of simple tea sets.
Just the same rule applies when you design, where simplicity of your solution help the design to be functional, self explanatory and intuitive.
MUJI and Uniqlo are both Japanese companies highly influenced by this philosophy of the tea. Their became an international success because of the simplicity, beauty and functionality behind the design of their products, stores, communication and customer experiences.
Experience Over Objects
Back in the 17th century, the tea ceremony was a place for negotiation, politics and high context conversation. Before the arrival of Sen-No-Rikyu, the traditional tea put a lot of focus on the value of objects used during the ritual of the tea, which were most of the time imported goods from the Chinese mainland. Sen-No-Rikyu innovated the old form of tea by getting away from the object but focusing on the experience of the attendee.
The way he did it was by changing the core value of the tea ceremony, by prioritising experience over object, from a place where people would come to display their wealth to a place for communal and shared experience.
Be Human
His idea about this equality under the roof of the tea room was so strong that he even redesigned the ritual. Prior to his arrival, tea would never be shared between people of different rank; his way of drinking was all about sharing the same tea and the communication that each of the participants had within this space.
Sen-No-Rikyu redesigned the structure of the tea room with a door so small that anybody even with a high hierarchy has to bow their body in order to open the space. His message was clear : even in this very hierarchic era of Japanese history, everybody would be treated as equal in the tea room.
This is a powerful example of how the philosophy behind a certain design is highly reflected in the physical design enhancing the message and the experience itself.
TEA FUTURES is delivered by the art collective “The TEA-ROOM” with the aim to rethink the 400 years old tradition, just as Sen-No-Rikyu did 400 years ago.
Text by Jun Kamei
