13.Sep.2011 | Jason Pearson
Zazen to Kaizen: What Do Zen Meditation and UX Have in Common?
As our Vookmaker platform continues to progress feverishly, the Vook office has been buzzing with chatter about platform aesthetics, features, functionality, and user experience design (UX).
The world of digital publishing and building a robust self-publishing platform is very new to me. Before coming to Vook, I was completing my degree in Philosophy and Religion from San Francisco State University where my primary focus was Buddhist and Hindu religious philosophy. (Does this make me Vook’s in-house philosopher?)
Back to the point, how the heck are my studies going to help me be successful working for a digital publisher and tech company in NYC?
Well, by playing philosophical connect-the-dots and approaching UX design as a nexus of user-centric philosophies, my existential quandary began to dissipate.
The other night, after an hour or so of trolling the web, I stumbled across Meghasri Dalvi’s 2024 article entitled, Effective User Assistance Design: Ten Best Practices. Something in her closing statement caught my attention. Her 10th Tip was “Practice Kaizen”. Huh? Turns out, Kaizen is Japanese for “continuous incremental improvement”. It’s the notion that there never exists a time where there isn’t room for updates and improvements. Hmm. I mulled it over for a minute. Having been steeped in philosophy for the last several years my mind wandered, “Kaizen. Sounds like zazen.” I thought about the two concepts and noticed a unique philosophical connection.
Zazen is a specific type of mindfulness meditation practiced by Zen Buddhists. In the few zazen sittings I have attended, interestingly, the process works quite similarly to that of usability testing. I know, it seems like a stretch but hear me out. The zen practitioner meticulously focuses on each individual breath along with every thought, sound, smell, or other sensation that enters the mind. The practitioner is attentive and single-pointed in her search for stillness, yet this is achieved by being keenly aware of everything going on around them at every instant. The common misconception is that meditation is about emptying one’s thoughts when really, at least according to zazen, all the influx of sense data should be acknowledged, examined, understood, and then let go of if they are impositions to the primary goal of self-realization.
Over time, and with lots of practice, the person meditating develops a deeper awareness of the full scope of the implications caused by every “click of the mind”. We are constantly bombarded with a variety of stimuli, but rarely do we take time to investigate what is triggering those events and why they have the effects on us that they do. Every stimulation invokes a response no matter how subtle. However, without the benefit of a guided, structured, and formulaic, practice to help us “slow our roll” and peel back the layers to see what’s happening on a deeper level, we usually think nothing of it and go on about our day. In the various schools of eastern philosophy guidance comes in the form of a guru, a roshi, or perhaps a community (sanga) of like-minded people.
The UX sanga in web design is kind of like a modern day approach to web zazen. Zazen is to self-awareness as Kaizen is to customer or user awareness. Zazen says, “Oh, you think you know yourself? Well, sit for an hour or two (or a lifetime), be silent, monitor every thought and feeling as they occur in one moment, and as they pass into the next, note every detail and you’ll be surprised what’s really going on.”
In a very similar way, Kaizen says, “Hey Company X, so you think your product is good to go? Well it isn’t. Do more, keep going, go deeper, keep improving….continuous incremental improvements will reveal that your product is not as simple and perfect as you think.” Even outside of the design world, in the domain of engineering, this idea of Kaizen is echoed in the Agile model of development—continual small improvements with each and every iteration.
Both philosophies—east and west, ancient and modern—point us to a more nuanced awareness of individual psychologies. Both employ methods to examine our thoughts and actions. So, if you’re looking for self-realization—try zazen. If you’re looking to understand and impress your customers and deliver the optimal user experience—try Kaizan. Both will certainly keep you humble along the journey.
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