“Yoga will change your life.” I will never forget these words that my husband, who has practiced a tradition of meditation for twenty-five years, said to me when I told him I was signing up for yoga teacher training. My intention was not to become a yoga teacher, but to deepen my practice. I had practiced yoga at various times since I was a teenager, but it was only after I sought refuge from my hectic, stressful life as an executive at Google and mother of two that I realized the benefits of yoga extended well beyond gaining flexibility and avoiding injury.
Indeed, deepening my understanding of yogic philosophy and adopting a daily mindfulness practice were transformative in ways beyond my expectations. Most importantly, I gained a perspective that guides my ability to tend to what is ahead of me. Soon I started to appreciate how this perspective permeates everything I do in life. Based on my firsthand experience as a design executive, mentor, and yoga instructor, I’d like to share how mindfulness practices can benefit designers.
Mindfulness Defined
Mindfulness is a way of paying attention to, and seeing clearly, whatever is happening in our lives. The attention paid is purposeful, in the moment, and without judgment. To those unfamiliar with mindfulness practices, consider what it feels like to be “not present,” perhaps when you’re on autopilot or multitasking. When we are not present, we fail to notice the good things about our lives, fail to hear what our bodies are telling us, and sometimes poison ourselves with toxic criticism.
Mindfulness is the opposite of that: it’s having the time and space to attend to what’s ahead of us in spite of distractions competing for our attention and a past history that shapes how we think and perceive the world. This focused attention is a tremendous asset to designers throughout the design process and all its activities: from inspiration and ideation to design and implementation.
Being Mindful When Seeking Inspiration
Design is for people; if you cannot understand people you cannot design. During early stages of design, designers often seek inspiration and stimulate innovation by attempting to build empathy with users. The act of combining empathy to understand a problem with creativity to generate insights and solutions is at the core of “design thinking.” By uncovering people’s latent needs, we can gain insight into ways our interactions with objects or surroundings can be made joyful.
The methods used to gain empathy in user experience work are well established. Field research, contextual inquiry, and usability studies are frequently used to bring attention and awareness to the actions we otherwise take for granted. These unconscious but ordinary acts reveal subtle but crucial ways we adapt to a world not perfectly tailored for our needs. The designer’s work as observer—not participant or judge—epitomizes the work of an empathic mind, not one that is analytical.
Empathic thinking is often easier said than done. Anthony Jack of Case Western University and his colleagues found that analytical thinking suppresses empathic thinking, and vice versa. There is a brain divide, so to speak, that prevents us from invoking the analytical mind and the empathic mind at the same time. As we are constantly surrounded by computers and immersed in company cultures increasingly focused on making decisions based on data, empathic thinking can become even harder to find.
Mindfulness practices such as yoga and meditation have been shown to increase empathy for others. They can offer a practical way for designers and team members to boost their individual abilities to delve deeper into the mind, body, intuition, and feelings, and integrate them into a creative expression that can be shared with the world. While mindfulness practices can be effective when engaging in design research and interacting with users, the best outcomes arise when there is a regular practice; empathic thinking becomes a muscle that can be flexed when needed.
Being Mindful When Ideating
During the ideation phase, designers must embrace a divergent thinking mindset. The main goal during this phase is to generate as many ideas as possible. We generally give ourselves permission to come up with a lot of bad ideas in order to generate a few good ones. Mindful design during this phase is about abandoning judgment and fear: letting go of judging ideas as “good” or “bad” while brainstorming, and letting go of the need to achieve the “One Big Idea.”
Yoga teaches us a lot about how to be playful and abandon judgment and fear, and illustrates how mindfulness practices impact outcomes in the physical body. When we stay in the present moment we stop comparing ourselves to others. Without the ego in the way we are able to be with ourselves without judgment and can more effectively sink into the poses that stretch the body. When we allow ourselves to be playful and not worry about falling when reaching for a goal, we allow ourselves to experiment and try things we didn’t think we could do. When the mind is present, the shapes we make with our bodies are beautiful. If we stress our bodies to contort into various shapes, the shapes are not beautiful but alarming. Similarly with brainstorming, when we let go of our ego and let go of judgment and fear, we become more playful and creative.
Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo found that people with an orientation toward the process of making—that is, staying focused on the act of creating, rather than the end product—develop more creative outcomes. He says, “When we are concerned about the product of the process in which we are engaged, we worry about how it will be evaluated, judged, accepted, and rejected. Our ego is put on the line. Worries can then feed back and distort the process of creating new ideas, new visions, new products.”
Mindfulness practices help us focus on the present. When we’re not worried about judgment of ideas (which comes later in the process), we can more easily relax and let the creative mind flow. As ideation becomes fun, joyful, and playful, ideas generated are similarly creative and fun. Thus it’s extremely important for designers to recognize what kind of mindset is appropriate for the stage of design they’re in. During brainstorming and ideation, where divergent thinking dominates, designers should adopt a playful, non-judgmental mindset.
Being Mindful When Designing Solutions
The thinking mind is not the creative mind. When designers are co-located with cross-functional team members to collaborate on a project, the team benefits from increased camaraderie, rapport, and trust built through frequent informal interactions. Yet, when designers are interacting with team members, conversation and negotiation invoke the thinking mind. In addition to co-locating designers with development teams, providing separate studio space for designers is an ideal way for them to achieve the quiet contemplation necessary to connect with their creative minds, which is equally important.
Designers not only need different physical space but also separate mental space to design. While engineering and marketing counterparts often seek ways to add more functionality and features into a product, designers must find a way to introduce features and functionality without overwhelming the user.
The secret of good design is knowing what to leave out. Thus mindful design during this phase is about achieving a Zen-like quality of not being particularly attached to anything: a feature, a specific design element or solution, or a desired outcome. Ironically, distancing yourself from the outcome increases the possibility of creating a great design. This notion of “non-attachment” is a fundamental yogic principle: it is a mindset where you do the best you can and what you think is right, but you don’t allow your happiness to depend on the outcome. When less is at stake, the mind is free to be more creative, open, and apt to explore.
Once ideation is over and it’s time to design, convergent thinking replaces divergent thinking and attention shifts towards prototyping ideas to test. Mindfulness practices give us the strength to let go of the need to be perfect. Striving for perfection, after all, is about ego: perfectionism comes from the need to avoid shame and blame from creating a less-than-perfect solution.
The rise of agile development practices has proven that it’s far better to invest time and energy into prototyping, testing, and iterating, than to take a waterfall approach, in which plenty of time is invested in planning and designing a solution that might not be what works best. Be comfortable with testing a less-than-perfect design, but commit to gathering feedback and iterating to continuously improve.
The Mind-Body Connection: Putting It into Practice
Practicing yoga teaches you to notice what is happening in the body and respond to those cues. Subtle shifts in the mind can lead to changes in posture, energy flow, and the way you carry yourself. Physical postures impact the mind as well; specific poses can induce surges of hormones that increase confidence, joy, or assertiveness.
The next time you run a design meeting, consider doing some yoga:
- Help people shed their ego by having them be present in the moment. At the beginning of a design review or brainstorm, have everyone pause for a few moments to practice focusing their attention and awareness on their breath. It may seem odd to ask people to do this, but in my experience, having a few moments to pause and declutter the mind is always well received.
- Movement and cognition are highly related. Get people to move during meetings. Have them stand and gather around to review design mockups. Give them pens to scribble on printouts when they give feedback.
- When facilitating brainstorming sessions, clearly delineate space for divergent thinking and allow all ideas to flow, regardless of judgment. Help others overcome their fear of rejection by responding with “Yes” or “Yes and …” instead of “No” or “Yes but….”
Adopting a daily personal practice of meditation can help boost your design skills. Meditation can be as simple or elaborate as you want it to be. You can meditate anywhere for any amount of time, from a couple of minutes to an hour per day, lying down, walking, or sitting upright with the hips elevated above the knees. To help focus the mind, employ a variety of techniques: bring the attention back to the breath when the mind wanders, stare at a mandala, candle, or object of meditation, or repeat a mantra. With practice, it becomes easier to quiet the mind and reach a calm, centered state.
It is not uncommon for people to report increased creativity when they practice yoga. When there is more openness in the body, there is more openness in the mind. Do a few stretches to open the chest and shoulders at the beginning of design sprints or hackathons; this helps prime the body and mind for receiving new ideas. The hips and psoas are often tight from too much sitting and standing, resulting in a constant “fight or flight” posture; open this part of the body to enter a playful state of mind. Forward folds are introspective poses that are helpful for getting to a place of quiet contemplation.
We are most creative when we achieve a “relaxed but alert state.” A daily mindfulness practice, whether yoga, meditation, or both, helps us practice putting the body and mind into such a state.
Most important of all is recognizing that you can choose your intention and to actively make that choice. In yoga, we begin each practice by setting an intention for how we are “being” in the present moment. Set your intentions based on what matters most to you, and make a commitment to align your worldly actions with your inner values. As you gain insight from meditation and reflection, your ability to act from your intentions will blossom.
Similarly with design, be clear about what your intentions are with your offering, whether a product or service. Internalize your mission and values, and let design be the expression of your intent. When your intentions are clear, so too are the fruits of your labor.Irene 从青少年时期就开始偶尔练习瑜伽，随着对瑜伽哲学理解的深入以及每天的专注训练，她的设计方式发生了变化。瑜伽的专注训练法能够让设计师从中获益。
文章全文为英文版요가의 마음 챙김이라는 수련은 마음을 열고 집중을 통해 창의성을 높임으로써 여러분의 디자인이 여러분이 갖는 의도를 명확하게 표현할 수 있도록 도울 수 있습니다.
“요가는 여러분의 삶을 바꿀 것입니다.” Irene Au가 이런 단어들을 처음 들었을 때는 요가가 갖는 영향력이 유연성을 얻는 것 이상으로 확대될 것이라는 사실을 몰랐습니다. Irene은 10대 이후 때때로 요가를 연습했지만, 요가 철학에 대한 이해가 깊어지고 매일매일 마음 챙김이라는 수련법을 단련하면서 자신의 디자인 방식을 바꾸게 되었습니다. 요가의 마음 챙김 수련법은 디자이너에게도 도움이 될 수 있습니다.
전체 기사는 영어로만 제공됩니다.“A ioga mudará sua vida.” Quando Irene Au ouviu essas palavras pela primeira vez, ela não fazia ideia de que o impacto do treinamento com seu professor de ioga iria muito além do ganho de flexibilidade. Irene tem praticado ioga esporadicamente desde a adolescência, porém uma compreensão profunda da filosofia da ioga e a adoção de uma prática diária da atenção plena transformou a maneira pela qual ela projeta. As práticas de atenção plena da ioga podem trazer benefícios aos designers.
O artigo completo está disponível somente em inglês.「ヨガであなたの人生は変わるだろう。」初めてこの言葉を聞いたときIrene Auは、ヨガ指導者のトレーニングが、体を柔軟にする以上に、どれほど彼女に影響を与えるかまったく想像していなかった。Ireneは10代の頃からヨガを時折行っていたが、ヨガ哲学に対する見識の深まりやマインドフルネスの日々の実践によって、彼女のデザインのやり方が変わった。ヨガのマインドフルネスの実践は、デザイナーたちにとって利点のあるものだろう。
“El yoga cambiará su vida”. Cuando Irene Au oyó estás palabras por primera vez, no tenía idea de que el impacto de la capacitación para instructora de yoga se extendería más allá de ganar flexibilidad. Irene había practicado yoga de manera esporádica desde que era una adolescente, pero un conocimiento más profundo de la filosofía del yoga y la adopción de una práctica diaria consciente transformaron las maneras en que diseña. Las prácticas conscientes pueden beneficiar a los diseñadores.
La versión completa de este artículo está sólo disponible en inglés.
