The time of experience:enchanting the everyday through design

The Japanese tea ceremony is an experiential moment of aesthetics and ethics of the everyday, a harmony between objects, beings, places, and practices. It underlines that everyday objects, heart of our material culture, exhibit a profound beauty, uphold a remarkable ethics, and yet go unnoticed. At the crossing of a reflection on a Japanese approach on design through the study of kansei, and a reflection on design in HCI based on embodiment theories, this research inquires first the western cultural hegemony of design in HCI, and second sets a cultural decentration of the discipline taking Japanese philosophy and culture as theory. This results in a novel perspective on design and designing, supported by an ethics of relation, an experience of thusness, and an aesthetics of irregularities. This perspective invites design to enchant the everyday, enabling to consider details of reality as it is lived, and to create unexpected moments, source of surprises and new possible outcomes. Therefore, inviting to culturally decentre design, this research suggests an original approach to design for the everyday, and contributes to find in it a major esthetical and ethical source, towards human development, as well as one’s sensitivity, and one’s values