Design and Order in Everyday Life

Author: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Year: 1991
Source type: article (Design Issues, Vol. 8, No. 1, Autumn 1991, pp. 26–34)
Raw file: raw/articles/csikszentmihalyi-1991-design-and-order-in-everyday-life.md

Summary

An empirical study of how ordinary people find order and meaning through the objects in their homes. Based on interviews with 315 individuals in 82 Chicago-area families (the study behind The Meaning of Things, 1981, with Rochberg-Halton), Csikszentmihalyi found that "art" objects were marginal to owners' psychological well-being; instead, "special" objects — furniture, photographs, stereos, Bibles, a Tupperware Venus de Milo — were valued for the personal memories, family ties, and self-conceptions they embodied. Visual values (color harmony, formal proportion) are not perceptually given but socially constructed, as Luria's Uzbek studies show. "Good design" maximizes the life goals of people in a given culture using shared symbolic expression; the creation of private meaning through household objects is "no less miraculous than the accomplishments of Rembrandt or Michelangelo."

Key Claims

• Objects create order in the mind not by embodying principles of visual order, but by serving as "plausible, concrete symbols of the foremost goals, the most salient actions and events" in a person's life.
• Of 1,694 objects mentioned, only 8% were graphic arts and 6% sculpture; the most-mentioned special object was furniture (36%).
• Of 537 reasons for cherishing 136 graphic works, only 16% had to do with formal/aesthetic qualities; 16% conveyed memories, 17% referred to family, 13% to friends.
• Younger generations respond to the "activity potential" of objects (what they can DO); older generations prefer objects of contemplation and memory.
• Gendered patterns: women (22%) far more than men (7%) saw special objects as personifying another person; men preferred interactive objects (TVs, stereos, sports equipment).
• Visual values are created by social consensus, not by perceptual stimulation — color harmony and form preference are culturally coded (Luria's Uzbek studies).
• Gestalt and Berlyne's optimal-arousal theories fail in real-life contexts because people do not perceive order/disorder objectively.
• Art critics do not discover natural aesthetic values; they construct criteria of value that become attached to visual elements.
• Widely shared cultural symbols (religious icons, folk art) have lost their ordering power; "each person, each family unit must discover a visual language that will express what they most deeply care for."
• Homes where family members shared common symbolic objects were cohesive; conflicted homes lacked such shared symbols.

Connections

Concepts: Symbolic Ecology · everyday life, dwelling, everyday architecture, habitus, ideology, thing ontology, appropriation, embodiment
Authors: mihaly csikszentmihalyi, pierre bourdieu, michel de certeau, henri lefebvre, dell upton, lars spuybroek, roman ingarden, guillaume bucchioni
Debates: theory of the everyday
Related source notes: spuybroek 2025 habit inhabit stuff trash, bucchioni 2022 nature of ordinary objects, upton 2002 architecture in everyday life, felski 2000 invention of everyday life

Direct Quotes

"Each home contained a symbolic ecology, a network of objects that referred to meanings that gave sense to the lives of those who dwelt there." (p. 28)

"Formal qualities alone almost never made a picture valuable to its owner." (p. 28)

"Visual values are created by social consensus, not by perceptual stimulation. Thus art criticism is essential for creating meaning... In reality they are constructing criteria of value which then become attached to visual elements." (p. 33)

"The meaning of our private lives is built with these household objects." (p. 34)

"The creation of private meaning is no less miraculous than the accomplishments of Rembrandt or Michelangelo." (p. 34)

"Each person, each family unit must discover a visual language that will express what they most deeply care for." (p. 31)

"Objects do not create order in the viewer's mind by embodying principles of visual order; they do so by helping the viewer struggle for the ordering of his or her own experience." (p. 30)

Open Questions

• How does the "symbolic ecology" of the home relate to Bourdieu's habitus — are the meanings objects carry structurally determined by class/gender, or genuinely open to creative appropriation?
• If visual values are socially constructed, what is the status of "good design" discourse in architecture — is it ideology critique in Csikszentmihalyi's sense?
• How does Csikszentmihalyi's account of objects as "concrete symbols" relate to Ingarden/Bucchioni's thesis that ordinary objects are purely intentional?
• Does the generational split (activity vs. contemplation) map onto the everyday-life debate between practice (de Certeau) and critique (Lefebvre)?