Design Engaged mini-presentation: Wabi-sabi, User Experience and Web2.0

I haven't spoken much yet about this year's edition of Design Engaged that I attended in Berlin in early november. I'll use this post to do that, as well as publish my mini-presentation about Wabi-sabi, User Experience and Web2.0 that I gave there.

I appreciate it immensely that I got invited to Design Engaged again this year, even though I don't consider myself the big-thinking, innovative designer that the conference seems to be full of.

This is also the reason why I volunteered to give a presentation during one of the breaks, instead of the main program. Unfortunately I was scheduled in the very first break, when every one wanted to meet & greet; I only spoke to one or two people about my presentation (subsequent break-presenters were given some time just before the break to announce their work).

However, I have no bad feelings. My presentation was half-baked (like that of many others present) and I wanted to see if others could strengthen my ideas around the topic. It also spoke of "Web2.0", which seemed to be a curse-word for many (I had to give Molly Steenson the argument-reversing "Hasselhoff" badge from our in-conference game Squabble, to make her talk in favour of the whole concept). And being there, with that bunch of smart thinkers, was reward enough!

What was the topic of my presentation? Well, I was inspired by a post by 37Signal's Matt Linderman, called Wabi-Sabi's simplicity. As he says's in the post:

It’s interesting to see how much this ancient Japanese philosphy relates to the world of interface design and programming.

When I looked into the ideas behind Wabi-sabi I couldn't but agree.

So I started mapping the ideas behind Wab-sabi to both a user-centered development cycle (research, design, evaluate) and the principles of designing for Web2.0. This lead to a diagram that I gave the title "Wabi-sabi as a user-experience design approach for Web2.0":


I am open to feedback on the mapping.