1.9 Rituals and Routines

Designers come into the initial product development process by adopting a human-centred approach to design. This means they take the time to systematically understand user behaviours, rituals or routines, and subjective views. This knowledge can contribute to designing better sensory experiences that enable you to perform your tasks well.

Think about some of the mini routines or rituals that are familiar, easy to follow, and an important part of your everyday experiences. How do they involve interacting with products, services, or environments? How can you determine if they are rituals or routines? One of a designer’s roles is to recognize the differences between rituals and routines in order to design the artefacts that can best contribute to those activities. Routines and rituals differ in some ways. Routines deliver efficient results (having a ‘wake-up’ cup of coffee or arriving at the workplace punctually), whereas rituals focus on deep beliefs that are associated with the steps of your activities, as we will discuss later.

Routines that are part of everyday experiences often take place within a whirlwind of activity, like boiling eggs, making bacon and toast, feeding kids, cleaning sticky spills, and drinking coffee. You may be able to relate to the ways some of these simultaneous routines create distractions, where your attention can be jumping among activities. Can you recall a time when you were rushing through a daily routine to the point of feeling like you were not really paying attention to what you were doing? Researchers Lévy and Hengeveld (2016) remind us that sometimes we perform these everyday routines automatically; they are mostly functional rather than meaningful. Functional rituals can be somewhat adjustable in their sequence or timing, like charging your cell phone or heating a frozen meal. These kinds of everyday interactions are more appropriately called routines and are focused more on performing an action without any deep meaning or emotions attached to it, like reheating that meal.

Over time, routine processes may evolve into deeply personal rituals, like tying your shoes in a certain pattern and then continuing to use that pattern each time you play soccer because you think it may contribute to a successful game. Reflect on special rituals that you find meaningful and the steps involved in doing them. The same rituals can happen both daily and ceremonially, and, therefore, it is the context of use that plays an important role in determining the nature of the design elements. For example, your daily teacup could be a functional insulated metal mug with a lid designed to hold a lot of liquid and to travel without spilling, whereas your ceremonial tea bowl could be a delicate porcelain vessel that fits into the palm of your hand, hot to the touch, and designed for slow and gentle interactions.

Meaningful behavioural cues can be designed into ritual artefacts to keep participants focused on the experience. For example, the Japanese tea ceremony is a well-known ritual that follows a sequence of multisensory events, using ritual objects such as a tea caddy, a tea whisk, tea bowls, a tea kettle, and a brazier. According to Pierre Lévy (2015) and Ger Bruens (2011), ritual sequences are often structured into a series of culturally significant actions that enhance personal values and meaning over time. These actions can be either simple or complex and are structured into three phases: a preparatory phase, an experiencing phase, and an ending or closing phase.

By way of further distinguishing between routines and rituals, Lévy and Hengeveld (2016) identify the key experiential qualities of rituals as:

• incorporating cultural values that affect people’s perceptions.
• requiring active and significant multisensory participation.
• separating from daily life in some way that frames them as special.
• positively affecting the performer in ways that ripple out into their other activities, adding to a sense of well-being.

To further help us recognize the differences between rituals and routines and to better design for them, we turn to anthropologist Grant McCraken’s insights on daily, exchange, expropriation, possession, and self-made rituals (as cited in Bruens, 2011):

Daily rituals or routines offer a way to balance, energize, and connect us to our world. They can be simple routines like having a morning coffee or a hot shower at the end of the day. Or they can be deeper rituals like meditating early in the morning. These daily rituals and routines provide meaning, comfort, authenticity, and connection to our day. They may provide reflective appeal.

Exchange rituals can be somewhat more special. They involve giving and receiving presents that highlight singular events like holidays, birthdays, celebrations, or life transitions. They often lead to symbolic attachments to the gifts (my best friend gave me this keychain) or product-related (we always use our family birthday knife to cut the cake) rituals that offer meaning to either the recipient or gift giver or both. They relate to ideo- and socio-pleasure.

Expropriation rituals include disposing of, disassociating with, or giving away an object, either by choice or not. Given that different objects may hold encoded meanings for each of us, we may feel a loss when it is no longer ours. For example, it may be emotionally difficult to give away old books or childhood toys that we no longer use. Sometimes a meaningful ritual can help with the transition to letting go. These rituals may respond to behavioural appeal as well as socio- and ideo-pleasures.

Possession rituals refer to the desire to possess and accumulate products for personal gratification or status. The purchase of the latest car, phone, or home can be both personally significant and contribute to your perceived social status. This is strongly connected to ideo-and socio-pleasure.

Self-made rituals are ways to adapt a practice from an existing ritual so that it fits one’s needs and context. For example, a couple might blow bubbles, which children commonly do for daily fun, or release sky lanterns at their wedding to honour a lost family member, hence personalizing their ceremony to reflect their values. This is an example of reflective appeal and ideo-pleasure.

RITUALS CAN MAKE EVERYDAY EXPERIENCES SEEM SPECIAL

RITUALS AND THEIR MEANINGS

In most cases, we perform rituals in specific ways to achieve a goal, honour cultural customs, or provide pleasure and satisfaction. The objects we interact with during rituals may embody meaning or transmit encoded messages or symbolism that varies for different users. For example, a pair of mittens given to you by your favourite aunt might be meaningful to you because they were a gift from your aunt and enable you to be warm and comfortable on a winter’s day. Whereas your friend may have the same pair of mittens that they regard as practical for warmth but not special in any way. Similarly, a designer might understand the purpose and function of a product but not the type of attachment a user might form with it. This is the unknown human variable that all designers face.

Designers may gain meaningful information to contribute to the quality of a design by observing and studying how people relate to the products in various contexts of rituals and/or routines. The goal of a successful design is to develop a functional, emotionally connected, and meaningful object that users will want, use, and cherish.