Zen and the art of website maintenance

and wabi-sabi share traits of modest forms and an emphasis on form after function. Today many of the signs you see in Japan give a modernist impression with an emphasis primarily on function and readability. Helvetica is as pervasive in Tokyo as it is in the International Typographic Style of 1960s Switzerland. This seemingly intuitive Japanese sense of functional simplicity is even apparent in Honda’s famous Asimo robot, which has a sleek and smooth exterior worthy of the next Apple product. So why is it then that a country steeped in beautiful, functional simplicity has websites that are crowded and often almost impossible to read, that seem to ignore modern design conventions, much less incorporate even a trace of wabi-sabi? Since Web 2.0 in the mid-2000s, interface design globally has moved toward a more simple but functional approach, resulting in the recent preference for flat design over ornamentation (e.g., consider how buttons have gone from a 3D beveled appearance to a more 2D style). Yet despite its long-term love of laptops and smartphones and some of the best Internet speeds in the world, somehow the sparse simplicity of wabi-sabi does not seem to have translated to the Web. Somehow the realities of 21st-century interface design have not caught on. (Japan is, incidentally—much to the surprise of many immigrants—a country where fax machines remain common.) As a design researcher living in Tokyo, I am trying to understand why this is the case. How can an innovative and creative culture—where timehonored wabi-sabi aesthetics seem to have permeated even robot design— have so many websites that look like they have not been updated in more P icture a Zen garden. Peaceful, serene, and meticulously maintained by monks with the kind of patience that can only be gained through the pursuit of enlightenment. A visit to a temple in the ancient town of Kamakura a few years ago left me with a tiny glimpse into the world of Zen and a taste of what is required to achieve such simple beauty. This aesthetic sense is summed up by the Japanese term wabisabi, which refers to the application of mindfulness to everyday life. Leonard Koren, who wrote one of the definitive Western guides to wabi-sabi [1], defined its essential characteristics as a beauty that is imperfect and impermanent but also humble and modest. It requires a rejection of the ostentatious in favor of function. To experience wabi-sabi takes patience and attention to detail. In his BBC documentary In Search of Wabi-Sabi, Marcel Thereoux [2] surmised that wabi-sabi was more than an intellectual pursuit of aesthetic ideals; it was something closer to a spirituality ingrained in the Japanese psyche. Since 16th-century Japan, the wabi-sabi aesthetic has revealed itself in several physical forms: from the elegant ritual of tea ceremonies and the minimalist floristry of ikebana to traditional musical instruments such as the shamisen. In the post-war period of the second half of the 20th century, this aesthetic has continued through the modern and post-modern eras. Architects such as Tadao Ando and Toyo Ito (Figure 1) have created elegant structures that manage to be as simple and functional as they are beautiful. This sublime sense of simplicity has manifested itself across various media. On film, Yasujiro Ozu captured an elegant beauty that inspired generations of directors. Similarly, graphic designers in Japan such as Shigeo Fukuda and Yoshiro Yamashita also reflected this aesthetic. Despite their disparate origins, modernist style