The principles of Mindful Design started with seven C’s, the attributes without which Design cannot be called Mindful:
Curiosity
Creativity
Compassion
Collaboration
Craftsmanship
Communication
Critical Intelligence
Then I started adding more: Courage, Charisma, Character, Concentration – and there are no doubt more to come.
There are two sides to Mindful Design:
1: Design for Mindfulness
The creation of spaces, experiences and products which encourage, enhance or invoke an atmosphere of calm and inner awareness;
2: Design from Mindfulness
For designers themselves, the practice of mindfulness as a design ‘tool’.
It’s my contention that Mindfulness, just as Sustainability continues to be, is a sine qua non of successful design practice in the modern, digitally connected, ‘always on’ age.
The increasing traction of Mindfulness and Wellbeing in corporate practice, workplace theory, and the educational, medical and leisure / hospitality sectors has not so far been matched in design theory and practice. It’s time that Mindfulness and Wellbeing join Sustainability as key drivers of Design.
Here we:
• Explore the connections between Mindfulness and Wellbeing;
• Question the recruitment of Mindfulness in the service of productivity and a better bottom line;
• Open up some of the debates around Mindfulness;
• Propose a set of principles which work not only for designers but for the world at large – you, for instance.
• Propose that we are all designers of ourselves and our own state of mind.