Skip to main content

Review - Shikake: The Japanese Art of Shaping Behavior Through Design

 Shikake: The Japanese Art of Shaping Behavior Through Design

I received an electronic ARC of this book through NetGalley for an honest review.

I'm never quite sure what to make of the "The [Cultural] [Art, Magic, Theory, etc.] of [Thing]" trend in book titles. I've admittedly not read that many, but they often seem to deal with something that is not so much a unique aspect of the titular culture as merely a method of doing things that is being labeled either by the author's country of origin or, in the case of those written by authors from the same country as the target audience, where the author first "discovered" the method. I get the impression that for this book, it's mostly a "Japanese art" because Naohiro Matsumura is from Japan and uses a Japanese term to describe the book's subject--not because design meant to gently modify behavior and encourage people to engage with aspects of their environment is specifically Japanese (though maybe it is more prevalent in Japan--I don't know).

The author is fairly clear that the types of objects he classifies as "shikake" are not exclusive to Japan (in fact, he specifically points out that just about the only one he uses as an example that is exclusive to a Japanese cultural context is the use of torii to discourage littering by invoking a sense of the sacred). Most of his examples are from Japan, because that's the location of much of his work--but he also uses several from the United States and elsewhere. Some of the book does seem like it's intended for a Japanese audience, but at least in the ARC I received, it's not clear if this is an English translation of a book previously published in Japan or if this English-language version is the original.

This is essentially a book about the ways design is used, mainly in the built environment, to encourage people to behave in the desired manner by offering them a choice, but making the "right" choice the one that is most appealing. I imagine this principle is pretty familiar to a lot of people--whether you've tried to train an animal using primarily positive methods, or have tried to arrange objects in your home or place of work in a way that encourages visitors to act how you prefer them to act, many of the basic concepts are here. While reading it, I also came to realize that much of what makes places like Disney World fun and memorable isn't the rides and the people dressed up in character costumes--it's little things this book defines as shikake, which delight the visitor and encourage engagement by making simple things a little more interactive or interesting.

The book also offers a definition of what makes something a shikake (as the author uses the term), and some advice for designing your own. It's a pretty fun little book that highlights some cool ideas, and at least in my view, it's always worth thinking about ways to gently guide behavior in positive ways without compulsion.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading Challenges for 2021

 I usually do set a numerical goal on the Goodreads reading challenges each year, and find them to be a great way to feel some sense of accomplishment in reading [x] number of books in a given year. Since I also started reviewing some digital ARCs through NetGalley last year, I've been writing more reviews in general (though the non-ARC books I read I may or may not review). I've toyed with the idea of doing some additional challenges before, but haven't--so I'm going to try for it this year! Because this is my first time doing this, I tried to choose challenges that mesh pretty well with what I already tend to read. This means, basically, that they're challenges I could have done okay on with books I read naturally over the course of a year. Yeah, that might not quite be in the "move out of your comfort zone" spirit of many challenges, but it seems like a way to ease into it. So, without further ado, I'm going to be trying the following:   Rose City R...
6 comments
Read more

Review - Police Aesthetics: Literature, Film, and the Secret Police in Soviet Times (Cristina Vatulescu)

In one sense, I only reading Cristina Vatulescu's Police Aesthetics because the ebook was available on Hoopla Digital through my public library, and I was looking for something interesting to read. The reality is that this is primarily how I discovered it, because in all likelihood if I had learned of its existence otherwise I would have requested it from interlibrary loan and read it anyway. It's exactly the kind of book that would have been very useful to me for various term papers as an undergraduate Russian Studies student, too, so there's almost a nostalgia factor for me when reading books like this. That said, I imagine its appeal to a general American audience is probably somewhat limited. It's a book about the role of the secret police in the literary/film world of the Soviet Union and Communist Romania, among other things, and it's at times a bit dry. But it's also an interesting look into what is (and isn't) to be found in the opened archives of p...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review - The Introvert's Edge to Networking

I received an electronic ARC of this book via Netgalley for an honest review. This book does, at its core, have some useful advice that I hope to work into my life. That said, it could have taught its lesson in a fraction of its length--and in my opinion, at least, would have been stronger for it. Most of the book's advice centers around identifying your professional passion, identifying a niche audience for it, and then--in essence--crafting a clear mission statement and using that when you meet people. The biggest issue I had with this book was that, despite being an introvert who struggles with the idea of networking, I spent most of the book feeling like the target audience was a person I both am not and have no desire to be. A considerable portion of the text seems to be aimed at a hypothetical reader who is already either a small business owner or else very successful in their field of passion, working in a capacity that specifically involves sales to wealthy clients. As a g...
Post a Comment
Read more