UnMind 75. Design of Design: Unskillful Means

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Chance is not random.
Synergy is arising —
in Design or Zen.

Welcome to the third episode of our new series on Design thinking and Zen. Note that we are capitalizing Zen, as is the custom, but also Design, as a reminder of its broader and deeper application to those uninitiated into its history and philosophy. The cognoscenti in both disciplines recognize the scope and breadth of each, in Zen referenced as the wide and long tongue of the Buddha. In other words, there is virtually nothing that does not in some way come within the purview of their teachings.

Last time, we promised to take a deeper dive into Design thinking this time, relating more of its method and techniques to those of Zen practice, and praxis. This last play on similar words was not intended exactly as a cliffhanger, but if you did not look them up, the fancy-sounding “praxis” carries the technical connotation of “practice as distinguished from theory,” as well as an “accepted practice or custom,” a very brief dictionary entry for a seldom-used term, other than in scholarly circles.

Definitions for the more common “practice,” go on for a page or so, summarized as “actual application or use of an idea, belief or method as opposed to theories,” the “customary, habitual, or expected procedure or way of doing of something,” or “repeated exercise in or performance of an activity or skill so as to acquire or maintain proficiency in it.” The three related examples cited are, respectively: teaching, self-defense training and medical practice; current nursing and child-rearing practices; language fluency and daily choir practice. So ubiquitous practice covers the waterfront. And this is only the noun form. Like many English terms, and appropriately for Zen, “practice” also functions as a verb.

So “praxis” in Design or Zen would distinguish those hands-on activities that result in actual tangible output, as distinct from the underlying theory, which may have been outdated by advances in technology or methodology within the discipline. “Zen is always contemporary,” Matsuoka Roshi would often say. Design, to be worthy of its name, must also remain “absolutely modern,” to borrow a phrase from the French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud.

Here we get a hint as to the dualistic construct of practice opposed to theory, in comparing Design and Zen. In Zen, it would correlate to the direct, non-verbal practice of observing buddha-dharma in zazen, as opposed to studying the written record of sutras and commentaries. Such as this one. Broadly speaking, the same bifurcation would apply to any selected area of endeavor. Training in all fields shares much the same dynamic, especially those of the apprentice-journeyman-master mode. In the applied art or science of Design, the documentation is as much or more visual as it is verbal. But the historical record’s relationship to current application is similar. Past is largely prologue to future design innovation. In Zen, we stand on the shoulders of giants who successfully adapted it to their times.

In professional Design, as in the Zen community, harmony within the group effects, and largely determines, the outcome of the project, in both worst-case and best-case scenarios. Personalities can get in the way of the creative process, but well-designed processes can compensate for personalities. There is no way to work around human nature, either in Zen or Design. Our lesser angels have to be taken into consideration without prejudice. But we do not try to change the people, in either case. We change everything else — the environment, the program, and the equipment — as needed. If we are successful, the people will be ready, willing and able to adapt, in positive ways. Skillful means are often indirect, to be most effective.

Of course, every profession in some sense entails problem-solving of some kind. But Design is focused like a laser on the issue of how to solve problems. Design studies include methodology, the study and assessment of methods themselves. We think of Design as primarily a problem-solving profession, usually addressing problems as defined by clients. The common syndrome is “leaping to a solution.” Clients often want to just sort of spit out the final idea, fully formed. Clients are often part of the problem.

Design clients bring all kinds of problems, usually within the specialty that your branding suggests: graphics, industrial, product, and now, website and social media. Everything is subject to design, or redesign. You can design furniture. You can design graphics, now for online small screen as well as print. You can design clothes. You can even design, or redesign, your life. That you can design or redesign anything can get to be a life-design issue. They say that if you have a hammer every problem looks like a nail. The social dimension is captured in the meme about the Japanese culture of conformity: “The nail that stands out will be hammered down.” If you are a professional designer, everything may look like it needs to be redesigned. You can waste a lot of time on projects you had no business, experience, or aptitude for taking on, for which the return is not worth it. There is a surprising amount of inertia inherent in physical design-build projects. You can leave most of it to others.

For example, cleaning periods at Zen centers — soji in Japanese — can be frustrating because they are often cut short, after only fifteen or twenty minutes. Which may not allow you to complete your task. You have to learn to leave finishing it to others, or to get back to it later. But of course, no task or project is ever completely finished. “Here comes another” was the old Zen man’s reply when the young monk asked why, at his age, he was still out there, sweeping the leaves. Problems, however you identify and define them, are part of a continuum. They just keep coming. But they don’t usually fix themselves.

One of the precepts of professional Design is that a problem must be defined as thoroughly as possible in order to determine the best solution. Definition is the crucial, true antecedent to any solution, from the familiar critical path management method, or CPM. The theory holds that if you thoroughly define the problem, then the most elegant and efficacious solution is likely to be inherent, even obvious, in the definition. Thus Design groups invest a lot of time in defining problems, rather than spit-balling solutions. In many cases the process ends up redefining the problem as perceived by the client. In any and all professions, even the experts are often plagued by tunnel-vision. A outsider viewpoint can help.

Zen is similar in that its approach is refined, or significantly redesigned, to meet the needs and context of each generation, like end-users sharing similar needs but different demographics. But certain basic principles survive the evolution of Zen practice over time, as they do in the development of Design. Many are common to both fields.

Such as simplicity. A very high value in design, its manifestations include such familiar classics as the bobby and safety pins, and all the basic machines including the wheel, featured often in caveman cartoons as an iconic placeholder for invention. In Zen, the design of meditation itself, as well as the classic meditation cushion, called zafu in Japanese, has become irreducibly simple over two-and-a-half millennia. I know, because I have tried to redesign both. Not much slop left in those tolerances.

You see all kinds of examples of problem-solving on the fly. At the health club I attend, they have a rather large whirlpool. On each of the four sides, there is a floor-tile sign that reads “No Diving.” It is not that large. And it is not that deep. It is obvious that If anyone ever did dive into it, they would immediately slam into the opposite wall. Yet here is someone’s solution to a perceived problem.

Another was a bumper-sticker I saw on a car in front of me. It reads “Be patient. Student Driver.” It occurred to me that we could all use one of these on the back of our cars. But if you think about it, you can’t really “be patient.” You either are patient, or you are not. We practice patience. In zazen, we develop patience on the cushion. Which then helps us be more patient with others. But you can’t just be patient. It takes practice. “Practice” is the root of “practical.” Zen is nothing if not practical.

Design also typically deals with practical problems, like storage and retrieval. I make the joke, based on a true story, that it took me about fifty years to understand that tables are not for storage. Shelves are for storage. Tables are work surfaces. As such, they must be kept clear, like the decks of the ship, empty of clutter. But you tend to scatter tools and materials on the work table in the heat of production, they end up getting in the way. Side tables, carts on wheels, and overhanging grids come into play.

Discipline in Design processes often amounts to paying attention to such details, just as it does in Zen. Both pay attention to detail, which is where God, or the devil, is to be found. Both Zen and Design are, by their very nature, practical in application. They work, however poorly or well, or work against you.

In post-digital filing systems, tangible paper folders have been replaced by on-screen instantiations, icons. File-naming protocol has become a thing, owing to the massive archives of information stored online. We forget what we called the document or folder, and randomly run key words through the search function, hoping to get lucky. Storage, without retrieval, is just organized chaos.

An example is the storage system I discovered at a mid-size retail design corporation when I joined them as a graphic designer. In pre-digital days, before the advent of computer-assisted-design, print production was fed by mechanical art, drawing-board paste-up, literally cutting paper images and type with knives, gluing them on mount boards, then photographing to produce plates for offset or silkscreens for printing. Storing art boards for reuse was a necessity, so they had built a room with counters against the walls, under which were vertical slots labeled alphabetically as initials for their clients, such as Zayre’s, a large retail chain at that time. As time went on, the number of boards that accumulated under the letter “Z” would overflow the slots allotted, so the whole arrangement would have to be revised.

I mentioned this problem to a teaching colleague from my tenure at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle Campus. An early computer design innovator, he was instrumental in founding SIGGRAPH, an annual conference on computer graphics started in 1974, a few years after I had moved to Atlanta. He explained, much as you would to an 11-year-old, the logic of the two-part system for storage and retrieval, common to public libraries. Books are not stored alphabetically, but listed that way in a card deck or other compact form, a quick scan of which tells you where the piece is stored. It does not matter that different client materials share the same shelf or bin, so the system can be expanded as needed. Which seems obvious once explained. Which, again, shares something with Zen. Once you begin to experience Zen, rather than think about it, some things seem obvious that were initially puzzling.

We may usefully extend the notion of storage and retrieval as a fundamental principle, and consider how it may apply to Zen. What are we doing in zazen in terms of storage and retrieval, in developing a Zen frame of mind toward everyday experience? Are we simply storing and retrieving experiences for further consideration? Or are we storing Zen teachings, and retrieving them as benchmarks for comparison to our own experience? How does the concept of storage and retrieval fit into the very personal scenario of “examining thoroughly in practice,” Master Dogen’s frequent trope? I leave the resolution of this koan to you.

One aspect of the special area called information Design is characterized by mnemonics, memory prompts. You may have seen my semantic modeling of Buddhist teachings, which visualize them as geometric forms. Historical teachings employ the device of enumeration, particularly from Buddha’s time. Remembering that there are four of these, six of those, eight or twelve parts to this, helps you to assimilate the complete concept, as well as to retain what is important, what to pay attention to, in Zen.

These days, we have all kinds of influences pulling us this way and that: social media, public television, politics, religion, and science, to name a few. All trying to tell us what is important to remember, what we should be paying attention to, what we should be doing something about, what we should be reacting to, what should be preoccupying our time and attention. In many cases, the message may be the last thing we should be concerned with, let alone obsessing about. Like the latest exercise device.

In Design we have this phrase, “The Worst Possible Solution,” a kind of nuclear option. If you can figure out what would be the absolute worst thing you could do in a given situation, it may suggest what you might do, that doesn’t go that far. Wrapping your mind around the worst thing as an extreme may be necessary to back up to a workable solution. For example, coming up with an improved concept for personal transportation, such as a new design for a car or truck. The worst thing for the client would be eliminating the need for a vehicle altogether, say by improving public transportation. But pushing the envelope that far may provide a more comprehensive context for envisioning vehicles that make sense in the next generation of transportation. Viable solutions may appear in the rear-view mirror.

Another Design exercise is called “Name that concept.” In developing and marketing an item or program, naming it becomes a vital part of cutting through the clutter of communication. Simplicity again. Note that book and movie titles have trended to fewer and fewer words, one if possible. Typically we tend to throw out different names, attempting to leapfrog. It is not done that way professionally. Chance or random processes are brought to bear. Nothing is truly random, but an element of surprise, the ”happy accident” embraces a lack of control. “Free association” yields a list of words positively associated with the idea. Random shuffling generates all possible combinations of pairs, hopefully yielding a name that names and captures the concept, but that you would never think up on your own.

Such methods typically involve three parts, the input, the chance process, and the output or yield.

These are the kinds of methods employed in design circles to enhance productivity. The attention to methodology inspires creativity, sometimes defined as a new combination of two preexistent things. We cannot really create anything new, but we can combine two or more things in new ways. This is an application of synergy, “the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects: the synergy between artist and record company” as my laptop’s dictionary would have it.

Again, compare and contrast with Zen. The method of zazen is random in the same sense that no scientific experiment can ever be 100% exactly replicated. When we return to the cushion, everything — and I mean everything — has changed in the interim. The very sameness that we perceive, in combination with the difference that we do not, triggers a synergistic realization of the harmony of sameness and difference. Sound familiar? Sekito Kisen recognized this dynamic long ago.

Next time we will take a closer look at what we mean by “The Problem.” Meanwhile take a look at your own definition of your problem, and see if you are missing something. It may indicate the solution.