In the materially stereotyped artificial world and the logically stereotyped spiritual world, the continuous abundance of material promotes a higher level of spiritual satisfaction, and the design significance of the experience economy era gradually rises to the design of "human freedom" in the living world. As the implementer of the spirit of freedom, designers' design thinking needs free design theory to promote the creative passion of "human-oriented" experience design.
Phenomenology, as a philosophy that studies "seeing", is the theoretical basis for the freedom of designers. The humanistic logic of phenomenology can restore the designer's experience of free and conscious life activities from the perspective of intrinsic intuition. The philosophical basis of phenomenology restores the designer's freedom to "see", not only with the naked eye, but also with the mind, and truly returns to the human being.
Based on the hub of experience, Dr. Dai Fuping combined the interdisciplinary research of phenomenology and design to write the book "Enlightenment of Design Phenomenology", a book that shouts for the freedom of designers. It provides designers with a phenomenology-based experience design approach** to help inspire and protect designers' life insights and spiritual creativity.
This article is compiled from "Enlightenment in Design Phenomenology".
01 Why apply phenomenology to experience design
Phenomenology is a way of looking at everything, which provides a theoretical basis for designers to exert their subjective initiative and observe life with an essential and intuitive vision. The core idea of phenomenology is to "return to the thing itself", so that designers can break away from the instrumental rational thinking of natural science, not blindly pursue the rigor of data to convince themselves and others, but truly face the world of spiritual life, return to the experience itself, and gain insight into various phenomena such as essential and intuitive perception, emotion, and will in the process of experience.
The core appeal of the experience economy era is to pay attention to people's experience and achieve high-level spiritual satisfaction. Phenomenology, on the other hand, can directly and purely describe experience, revealing the essential phenomena of things in an attitude of letting go of doubt, and giving rich meaning to the living world. Experience design represents the era in reality, and phenomenology expresses the era in thought. The fusion of the era of reality and the age of thought can better reflect the spiritual logic behind human needs, and the process of experiencing freedom is intuitive to the essence.
The essence of design innovation is to realize human freedom. In the infinite stretch of space and the infinite changes of time, human beings directly and intuitively experience the bits and pieces of the living world. Therefore, the experience of excavating the essence and intuitiveness is the basis for the realization of human freedom. While the designer intuitively observes the user, he also has insight into his own feelings, which is a process of studying spiritual experience. Therefore, a real designer is a philosopher who looks up to the starry sky, and needs to pay attention to the spiritual experience with freedom as the essential characteristic on the basis of the humanistic logic of phenomenological philosophy.
02 Phenomenology-based experience design**
The purpose of experience design is to awaken and enhance people's perception of the world, promote the embodiment of the world to people, and feel the complete physical and mental experience. The flow of experience formed in the objective temporal consciousness allows us to form the inner temporal experience, that is, the manifestation of the conscious process of the original impression experience, the recall experience, and the desired experience. In the phenomenal space where people and the world are organically connected, we can feel the relationship between background, otherness, interpretation and embodiment that are completely independent and closely connected. The unified experience of mental interaction in internal time and phenomenal space is the phenomenological logic that realizes the "free change of imagination" and "intuition" of the experiencer.
Spiritual interactive experience is the embodiment of freedom beyond time and space, and it is a meaning-driven innovation of spiritual attributes. When designers design products and services, their ultimate goal is to convey meaning through products and services, so that users can feel meaning. Therefore, design innovation should suspend products and services, gain insight into the meaning of things with the philosophical idea of "I-you" relationship experience, lay the foundation for the "pain point" design method with the spirit of "humility", lay the foundation for the "fault tolerance" design method with the spirit of "negative yoke", and lay the foundation for the "allow exceptions" design method with the spirit of "forgiveness".
How designers conduct mental exercises
Hold your breath and concentrate on the feelings, polish the feelings, and give shape to the feelings with design rhetoric
Design rhetoric is a dynamic process of expressing the concept of feeling, connecting language and physical objects, and taking shape in chaos what is to be expressed. Design rhetoric is also a kind of cognitive activity and thinking activity, which requires designers to constantly express their feelings in the language of personality and resonate in the expression of individual feelings, so as to construct the commonality of the first class.
Design rhetoric is like a design argument, which activates the feelings and creativity of the other party with emotion or passion, breaks down the distance between the product and the user's thinking, arouses resonance, and guides identity. Feeling is delicate, and designers need to explore the infinite possibilities of language itself, polish the feeling, give shape to the feeling, and make the living world more colorful.
Cultivate empathy based on the "I-you" relationship and construct the ethical law of design practice
Empathy is the empathy between "me" and "you", and it is based on the designer's free experience to form the fragmented information into a whole "you" for design insight. "Intersubjectivity" is the philosophical basis of empathy, the study or regulation of how one subject interacts with another subject that operates as a complete subject. Empathy means that "I" should feel the feeling of "you", and "I" and "you" complement each other to form a resonance with each other. From the design of things, the design of the relationship between people and things, and the design of the relationship between people, the designer constantly carries out the spiritual training of "human community".
The fruit of empathy is the moral law of design practice, which is to design only according to the principle that you love and want others to like it too. Assuming the user's liking according to their own liking, and hoping that the user will also like it, is the designer's true desire from the heart through "assumption" and "hope", neither turning off his own feelings, nor ignoring the user's feelings. Therefore, designers can increase their courage and confidence in design exploration through the moral law of design practice.
Conclusion
There must be light, so there is light", and only with the light of spiritual concepts can we promote the ideal to move forward towards reality. Phenomenology helps us to emancipate our minds from the theoretical viewpoint of spiritual creativity, to jump out of the box, to gain an in-depth and intuitive insight into the life world, and to give full play to the ideological spirit of the times. Therefore, phenomenology is like a light that illuminates our understanding and knowledge of the world, bringing free design thinking to the realization of experiential design with spiritual freedom as the ultimate goal.