The Japanese tea ceremony cha-no-yu is an ancient tradition; it's most famous practicioner went by the name Sen no Rikyu.
Amongst many things he became emporer Hideyoshi's favorite tea master, and part adviser on matters of politics and culture.
On a certain day emporer Hideyoshi decided to pay Sen no Rikyu a visit at his house. This news came to the tea master. On the eve of the emporers visit Sen yo Rikyu noticed something; it had started to snow.
Quickly the tea master grabbed all his pillows and placed them on top of the stepstones in his front garden; thus covering them from the snow.
The next day he got up very early and removed the pillows, forming a simple, natural and beautifully clear path for the emporer to take from the gate to the tea masters house. The emporer could not help but smile and appriciate the beauty of nature.
More and more I have come to believe that the coming years will be a time of interaction-design led marketing, with the primary task of making the known/local/mundane/obvious, unknown/exiting/re-valueable, and put back in to the right context for consumers and people in general.
Various books, blogs, thoughts, causes (such as the ecology, economy, human population and health) lead me to this thinking.
So in a series of posts, called Strawberries in January, I will try to explain my views, the origins of them, possible applications for people and also catalogue the thinking of others who do and think along these lines.
A lot of this may be known already to those who read it, so feel free to correct and add something to the posts as they are posted, that will assist and help me in my thinking and writing.
