I was having an interesting conversation today about matcha tea bowls, a subject I wouldn't have thought to be discussing, to be sure. What was interesting was the concept that their are varying levels of quality of the tea bowls, with varying levels of cost, with the more expensive ones being fired in such a way as to enhance your entire matcha experience.
That got me thinking about the traditional Japanese approach to many things, where the accomplishment of performing some task is, many times, secondary to the experience of performing that task well. That is an odd concept for Americans to grok, and it is something that I want to bring into some of the projects I am currently working on and something I want to apply to some of my product designs. Not in the sense as I think everything Japanese is awesome (even though sushi really is, and sake), but in the sense that the concept of the experience being the reward is one I think we could adopt to great benefit of users of our products.
This is something I will have to think on for a bit and flesh out. I know that there is a lot written these days on experience-based design (I am mostly thinking of the book "Subject to Change", a good book), but I don't think the concepts being presented go deep enough. I'll noodle on it a bit and post again on the subject.
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