Texture
Introduction
Japanese design treats surface as a channel that carries information to the hand and the eye at the same time. The vocabulary is unusually specific about it. Hadazawari (肌触り) names the feel of a surface against skin. Tezawari (手触り) names the feel in the hand. Shibusa (渋み) names a restrained, understated quality that becomes more interesting on longer acquaintance rather than less.
Surfaces are also expected to change. Urushi lacquer develops depth with use. Wood floors and handrails darken where hands and feet fall. Unglazed clay absorbs oil from tea. A surface that records use is legible about its own history, which is the material basis of what is usually translated as wabi-sabi.
Texture as an interface
Texture does work that a display would otherwise have to do.
- Orientation. A ridged edge, a change of grain or a raised boss tells a hand which way an object goes without a mark or a label being read.
- Grip. A finish can be specified so that the hand holds an object correctly without being instructed.
- State. A detent, a click or a change in resistance reports a setting to the fingers, leaving the eyes free.
- Wear. A surface that ages visibly reports how much a thing has been used, which is information about the object that no indicator provides.
This has a formal research tradition. Kansei engineering, developed by Mitsuo Nagamachi at Hiroshima University from the 1970s, sets out to measure the affective response a person has to a product's physical properties and to feed those measurements back into specification. Mazda applied it to the interior of the MX-5.
A textured surface does not need to:
- Be looked at
- Carry a label
- Be powered
- Be learned from documentation
Just as a hand finds the right end of a tool by its finish, a well-made surface tells a person what to do with an object before they have looked at it.
