The discussion for which this is the transcript is here: Designing For Joy
uptalk ˈʌptɔːk/
noun: uptalk; up-talk
1. a manner of speaking in which declarative sentences are uttered with rising intonation at the end, as if they were questions.
What are your first impressions after watching the video? What did you notice, what did you think of, what associations do you have?
—colorful and smooth and calm is common sense, most people would do that. but I have a different idea, that joy is related to something that makes you happy and comfortable, but some people like dark, or evil, or death. and i you ask ‘what makes you comfortable’ people might choose instrument music, or hyper or happy music. and some people prefer heavy metal and rock music, and they dress up, the idea they represent is all stunning, black and white, and pointy and sharp, like that, but they seem to enjoy that. and young kids listen to loud music, and the parents ask why , and they say that it makes them feel happy. so that’s what i was thinking about. it’s not colorful and peaceful, but probably most people would do it this way, but they do it another way. joy is related to being happy or comfortable, but there’s no good or bad in there.
—thoughts?
—I listened to really depressing music when I was a kid and i loved it. but it’s because i was depressed, and it made me feel less depressed when I listened to it’—
—I think what the author is talking about for common shared experience, is about physical design. and some of her observations quite surprise me. she mentioned like a sense of abundance, or elevation
—going up!
—it seems like, yes, that’s like a common human nature. so it seems like, probably there are some really something is crossing the limitations [borders] the common desire, for the physical, or visual intention.
—the image or designs may be subjective, because you may like this kind of design but I prefer another. so i think colorful is common for making people happy, but for some people, they prefer another way, a pure wall, a pure design makes them feel peaceful
—actually that’s something I wanted to talk about, because some of the spaces were so busy
—yes because color, so it was busy. only one color, it’s not colorful, but at least five colors, it’s a lot. but I agree the with too many colors it becomes too busy
—I agree joy, it’s related to colorful and abundance, does it imply unprofessional
—it does, doesn’t it. and I want to know why
—i have the point but I shouldn’t’ say it so early
—say it!
—because she mentioned that those joyful things are kind of human nature, very related to basic human experience. but being professional means you have to be away from natural.
—say more!
—for example, why people think colorful things are more joyful. because in the four seasons, in the winter everything is dead. so there’s no color. bu tin the spring and summer, the flowers are all in full bloom, so the colors bring a sense of joy. but in professional, we have to wear the black and white suits, because it means we have to be away from our nature ourself.
—I agree with you, and why is that?
—but some profession prefer colorful, like designer
—it signifies their profession in a way
—for me it’s hard to concentrate in a colorful environment. and if you can’t concentrate, you’re unprofessional. in a colorful environment, you want to have a party. so if your clothes are too colorful, you are not going to the office for work
—so you couldn’t be in a design office
—yeah, never
—although architects are famous for wearing very severe colors.
—but I found it very interesting, that for example that wearing official suits, black and white, it’s that you try to keep it simple so you can concentrate. but it’s like a conflicting idea that they want to make the working environment more colorful
—like google
—well you don’t wear a suit at google, probably!
—but like at EVA air, we all wear suits, because evergreen is a very old company, it has that kind of Japanese company spirit. so it’s very straight and serious. and recently they start modifying the company, making the cafeteria more colorful and relaxed, and I don’t know.
—do you not like it?
—well, I like it, it’s just like they restrict you to follow the rules, but they use the other way to change it and try t make you more joyful, relaxed, comfortable
—in THEIR way
—yes! they think you’re happy, and they ask you and you have to say yes you’re happy otherwise bye-bye
—i wanna ask tho, what’s the difference between joy and happiness? also, in chinese, it’s different
—joy is 喜悅
—happiness is 幸福, so she’s like what’s the
difference, and she’s like joy is a moment, you can have that moment, but happiness is more like a status.
—I agree with that, even for english, but interestingly in the english conception, joy is seen as attainable but happiness isn’t. like, you can have the moments, but the long term is probably not possible. I don’t think people would say this, this is me thinking about what the culture is like. Is that true in chinese?
—yep0
—you agree!
—[increasing joy story] not possible, too artificial
—like try to maintain it
—how?
—I don’t know
—eat ice cream every day
—you will get tired of it. it doesn’t make sense
—that’s the conclusion I keep coming to.
—there’s like 5 emotions, happy, mad, sad, bad, can’t think of the other one. there’s only one that’s happy in there.
—yeah, how come?
—like, if you ate sugar all day, and then somebody was like, let’s have cake for dinner, you’d be like ugh, but if you’re eating something salty all day, you’d still be into having a nice dinner, maybe.
—maybe it’s the result of comparison, if you do the same thing all day, you won’t be happy
—but some people are
—for example
—there’s a number of artists
—it’s a tolerance, if you keep eating sugar, the tolerance is there.
—there’s something about the contentment of a regular schedule, there’s a man who was a dentist or something, and every day he drove at 6 am to go to work and he loved it, the quietness, the smell of the snow in winter, the smell of the earth in summer. Also among designers and creative people, we know that for some, having a very regular schedule means that you can have really wild or unconfined creativity in your work. If you were also wild or unconfined in your life, it would be harder to get it into the work. Haha, but I don’t work like that, i’m pretty undisciplined when I do creative work. But I think about this a lot.
—i have that feeling sometimes, the morning driving, or getting up early in the morning, passing the bridge to Yonghe, I enjoy the view
—that view is spectacular, I sometimes am glad about the traffic, it gives me more time to see that view of the river and the mountains!
—find an inner-peace moment, it’s not necessary, but it just allows your brain to be blank. but if you talk about extending that joy or happiness, I have this idea, when I was in college working a part time job, I didn’t know then, some of my managers I worked for, they just talked about a theory, there was a theory at the time, why you can’t finish your job, is because you do too much, you don’t have time to work out or meet your friends. it is true, but sometimes I feel people twisted the meaning, and pushed the work off to other people, like that’ your problem, if I can get off work and go eat with friends, that’s happy. and it’s like, it’s good for you, but it’s not good for the team if it’s a necessary project. and I keep thinking bout that sometimes you know when you get through some result or project, you will get joy. for example, when I clean up my house. it’s a mess, i’m sweaty, my back hurts, mopping the floor, doing the dishes, there’s no one to help, but when i finish everything my house is so neat, I’ll feel joy. I feel a sense of accomplishment! I take a shower, I clean myself too, it’s great. it’ snot just about the sad or harsh moment, it’ snot just negative, or getting through. I’ve heard that someone said, to get something you want you need to do something that you never did before. so it’s going to be painful when you do that thing you don’t know how to do, it’ll be hard, but when you achieve it, it’s a pleasant moment for you. you’ll get joy. I mean it could turn out worse, but, it’s not about avoiding the negative or bad or sad moments. when you get through this there’s something behind this.
—wow I can’t beleive you’re saying that because that’s literally what i’ve been telling my students. I’ve been starting our classes telling them that of course I want to have fun together, but when you’re doing a serious project, you can’t always be doin fun things, that you also have to dig in and be serious in order to acheive the very great feeling of ‘satisfaction’. To be satisfied with your work, you sometimes have to put in difficult effort, but it can be so worth it in the end.
—write on the blackboards “enjoy it when it sucks” “we only do the hard things because we are marines” “the only easy day was yesterday”
—that’s so sad!
—that’s a little hard core for me!
—you can see how the frogmen train, if you get through it, it hurts it sucks, enjoy it. but then you pass it and earn it.
—I feel like maybe there should be a balance between enjoying what you’re doing, having fun with it, and putting in the work to get to the satisfaction. too much of either is maybe not good
—childish, feminine, unserious, self-indulgent, this is the list of what she said was not professional about joyful things
—why feminine, feminine is related to women
—can you say more?
—I just don’t understand, it’s sexist
—don’t you think like, traditionally, male things are like the serious things, and the female things are like the unserious things. like sterotypically feminine things like sex and the city, it’s colorful clothes, and impractical
—lots of men are in the cosmetics industry
—and they’re seen as unserious for men
—I don’t think that’s fair, because i meet the captains of the airplanes, and sometimes they’re both female, the captain and copilot. and for me it’s, Im very impressed.
—but it’s not very common right?
—yes, in the aviation industry, it’s true. but you can’t say men are doing better than women
—well, you can, but women are getting more and more
—but even though men and women can do kind of professional jobs equally well, but the way to put the self-image should be very man like. like doctors, they wear the white coat.
—because of a kind of hypertension, we’ll call it white-coat-hypertension, they get it when they see a doctor.
—and how about judges, they always wear black
—what were you going to say tho
—I think the first reason is just, it presents a kind of image, of concentration, and secondly, it’s about 超然，independent, without my personal judgement
—impartial!
—ohhhhh! impartial!!!
—omg, it’s like toy story, the alien dolls
[laughter]
—okay so google says 超然 is like
aloof, but I think impartial is the word
—so black and white makes us feel impartial.
—impartial, focussed (concentrated), and what else?
—authority
—agree!!! but why? why is authority black and white colors
—maybe because it implies impartiality “it’s not me controlling you, it’s just ‘how things are’”
—it belongs to, because black and white are not a color, because colorful doesn’t include black and white
—oh! so black and white are free from emotion
—oh! yes, and authority is supposed to be free from emotion.
—colors are strongly associated with emotions
—so you will feel joy.
—professional you need to be free from joy
00because if you put too much emotion in to your profession, you cannot achieve the authority and impartiality
—I wanna say that, I feel like this is a misconception. we are emotional beings, ignoring our emotions leads to things like cancer, at minimum we’re lying to ourselves that we’re not feeling emotions. so emotionless authority is a myth. I feel. I feel like, if emotions were acknowledged and included in professions, it would be, like, more mature. I’ve been thinking about this in various ways over the last few years.
—you mean the way we present ourselves, or the status or outlook is professional, or the way we do it…i’m thinking about judges, when I was a student, our teacher told us, that in chinese 情理法，it’s emotional and reasonable and also the law. it’s like the judge, when they judge the case, they should put the feeling or the emotions first, and then consider what’s reasonable, and then i you can’t tolerate it, then you use the law. it feels like conflict. if we present ourselves, using colors or uniform, the way you present yourself, for status it’s not emotional, but sometimes, you have to put your emotion in there, for example the judge, if someone reported there’s a person is causing traffic and the judge understands that he or she is maybe collecting recycling, an old person, then yes, the person is agains nth law, because causing the problem, but you understand their living environment is not that well, so they use emotion to solve this case. if only using the law, it’s easier, just do the fine, but I think that also if it’s that much easier, then everyone can do it, then we don’t need the judge. some of course are f-d up, but
—so professions still need emotions, they can’t be emotionless
—but in the US, the jury system, the lawyer will use the emotion to influence the jury, and then they will get the result they want, so emotion sometimes still affects things
—completely agree. but is that a good or a bad thing in the case of the jury
—I don’t know because we don’t have that system, bu there’ are a lot of discussions about this, because they think only one judge to decide a case. and what about the jury system
—yeah, why don’t we have it! we should have it
—really?
—yes
—at least that way you have a lot of people to discuss for a case
—the jury system is ridiculously manipulated in the us, I like the ideal
Final Statements:
today’s topic is very attractive for me, because i’m more interested in topics related to humans or humanities stuff. i think we didn’t actually talk a lot, there’s a lot more to talk about. she’s using color as an example, I think, I came up with an idea, what about color blind people, or blind people, i’t’s not the only way to feel joy or depression. it’s a feeling that you can have hearing or any five sense of the human bodies. after this video, I think about how do I gain my joy or happiness? to be honest, in taiwan I don’t find happiness, especially when growing up. as a little kid i felt very happy, the most important reason is because most of my family is still together, and my grandparents were still with us and that’s where I found happiness. now they passed away, and the girls married out and CNY nobody comes home and I feel like I lost something, and society’s kind of f-d upright now, but I still have some joyful moments. and where do I get these joyful moments from? from normal situations like everybody, seeing a beautiful pictures, or music, or funny jokes. but for me, I have another aspect is, it’s kind of negative, I feel joy when I see bad people get punished, I know it’s wrong, but it’s reasonable. they got their joy from taking other people’s things, so ti’s great when they get payback. i think it’s society gives me this kind of feeling, ppl do bad things to others, they make it seems like right, and they hurt people, so when they’re punished, I feel good. sometimes we think when we help people we find our joy. but when I help bad people I don’t find joy. like the other day, working on the airplanes , and it was don, and the plane was going to leave, the airbridge was going to release, and a passenger was coming down the bridge, he seemed familiar, and he was carrying LV luggage, and there was a gap between the airbridge and the door, and I helped him move his luggage, to get him to be more comfortable, and afterwards my colleague was like, do you know who it is? it’s Xu XuDong, the boss of Sogo, he was digging holes in Hualien, and ruining things, and I don’t like him. nobody likes him. and when I helped him? I don’t find joy in that. I like helping passengers, it makes me feel happy and joyful, but not then. I was like, I want to got on that plane and kick him out. if this was my last day in the company I would have, “you sir, are the problem”, but yeah, that’s how I feel.
—do you want to create your own family to recreate that happiness?
—I’ve thought about that, but I’m like, a picky person. it’s not easy for me to find a person in Taiwan. well maybe I shouldn’t say that, because if I meet her.
the discussion reminds me of an interesting question, when having emotions is professional or not. as human beings, we have to care about others’ emotions. but sometimes it implies unstable and cannot make a reasonable judgement or decision. so if sb wants to be a professional, they should have more emotion or less emotion? I still cannot figure out what is right or wrong, to have more emotion. I need to thing about this question
—I feel like this could be a whole discussion. we’ve talked about this before, right?
—we used to discuss emotional labor.
—yes, I remember that one
—but what he’s saying is not quite the same thing.
—I’m not saying having emotion must equal unprofessional
—but that’s what we basically started off saying, in this discussion, but I think, real professional also takes emotions into account like he was saying with the judge earlier.but how does that work? I don’t know.
—right because if the judge has too much emotion, it could be unfair, or unreasonable
—like that guy who’s being selected in the US, he was defending himself, with so much emotion, that was unprofessional emotion
-0so the question is, what is professional emotion
—like if it’s your party and you are not happy, is that unprofessional emotion?
—I love this example so much
I'm thinking about subtle color, and how it can influence you, and like, how the color green affects us. Like, in our house, we painted the walls 秋香黃, and so on cloudy days, it’s the most beautiful golden color. it’s such a subtle color, it’s not much different than white, in a way, but it feels warm and golden and like comforting, whereas white walls on a grey day feel gloomy. so I think the colors of things around us are deeply important. As a negative example, I find that I often take the wrong train at kuting station, and you know how it feels so dark and gloomy in there? They even put in a whole bunch of extra lights, and it still really didn’t help. I finally realized, it’s the color of the panels on the walls. it’s this grey putty color. I’m sure it looked fine on the designer’s desk, but especially on the lower level, it’s the color of everything that’s not a sign, and it’s just, gloomy, dark, sad. It’s distracting and confusing. So it’s not just bright colors that affect you, ALL colors affect you.
I was particularly interested in the common shared experience mentioned by the author, that some particular physical design or some visual expression would bring a sense of joy. because it make me think about when I was a kid, I learned the calligraphy, at that time, firstly I studied a kind of type of Yanti, mr. yan’s type of writing. and then the teacher showed us another kind of writing called mr. chu, another style it came to my mind because mr. chu’s painting style, has more curves, so it make me, especially as a child, it felt more joyful, and more light and more graceful. so it just make me think about, probably some of the physical design or expression are some hiding human experience. like probably, but it needs to be dug into more, like why the circle or curve will make people feel more light more sustainable, or why people like the impression of elevation. Just from our ancient ancestors, they like to build towers, or they like to imagine they are birds they can fly up, so probably behind this physical design there are some human elements hiding inside. but it needs to explore more.
—as you were talking, I kept feeling like, I need more joy like that in my life.
—we’re all visual animals, before we have language3, we have shapes, or color, we learned this naturally. like wheels, like fire is red, and they’re either vibrant or burning or dangerous or makes you excited. or the sun rises, and we’re like how does it come up and is so shiny, and people start worshipping, 太陽神!
—every culture, regardless, we all like something light.
—it’s just how, a very essential sense, you feel pain, happy, hurt, hungry, you eat and you’re happy, and you’re hungry again, and it’s a cycle. and you realise you have to hunt to have food, and you have to hurt something so you can eat
—you’re our confucious tonight
I think everyone talks a lot and our ideas are quite a lot today, I cannot fit everything very clearly, but what’s interesting is the ‘uptalk’ I just want to have an example for you, I recently read an article regarding Theranos, Elisabeth Holmes
—she’s going to go to jail too
—no, but the company is broken up. the article said that she’s very persuasive, and i mean that her accent will never be like ‘uptalk’. I just want to mention it.
—she’s like I. Am. Telling. You. The truth. Her tone was just, strongly decisive.
—yes! and like investors gave her a lot of money. I just think about this example and want to share with you today. very fruitful discussion today, so much I never thought about!
