Maria Erdal Jørgensen
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Principles for Caring Design

Based on Yuriko Saito’s book Aesthetics of Care.

 

Year: 2026
In collaboration with Rose O’Sullivan and Vegard Tufto Wik





Introduction: The importance of caring as a designer

A designer’s care or lack there of becomes legible in the created object itself, felt by the user through form, function, and experience. These principles communicate what the designer should think about while designing to achieve care through products.

Care in design is not incidental; it is embedded in every decision. Designers demonstrate care when they bring sufficient knowledge, experience, and trained aesthetic judgment—considering composition, proportion, spatial relationships, and the full lifecycle of the object. Materials are chosen for sustainability, resilience, and graceful ageing. Products are designed to be repairable and contextually appropriate. 
Just as frustration signals neglect, objects that elicit comfort, ease, or pleasure communicate attentiveness. A knife that rests perfectly in the hand or a chair that invites relaxed posture—these are design gestures that make care perceptible, turning everyday use into an experience of connection. 

Yuriko Saito offers the theoretical foundation for these principles in her book Aesthetics of Care. Care-based aesthetics considers the ethical quality of our relationships with objects, people and the environment as inseparable from aesthetic judgement. Beauty and care are not separate concerns; how something is made, maintained and its impact on the world shape its aesthetics. 
These 8 principles will guide you on the way of designing products that will care for the user and encourage care in return.





1. Proportionate expressiveness


The object’s aesthetic appeal should cultivate enduring care relationships, not spectacle or short-term infatuation.

Aesthetic appeal is not neutral. It shapes attachment, behaviour, and patterns of use. Expressive, intriguing, or emotionally engaging qualities can strengthen the care relationship between person and object, fostering attentiveness, deepening familiarity, and sustaining long-term relevance. However, when aesthetic intensity is designed primarily to capture attention or provoke desire through novelty, it can cultivate short-lived infatuation rather than sustained attachment, accelerating cycles of acquisition and replacement instead of creating enduring relationships between people and objects.
Aesthetic decisions should therefore be proportionate to the role an object plays in someone’s life. Frequency of use, expected lifespan, and the depth of engagement an object invites, all weigh on what register of

expressiveness is appropriate. A ceremonial or occasional- use object may suit—even benefit from—a richer aesthetic presence. An everyday object used repeatedly risks tiring the user if its expressiveness exceeds what the relationship can hold over time.

Restraint is not the default answer. Playfulness, character, and expressiveness can themselves be forms of care when they enrich experience without overwhelming it. The question is not how much, but whether the aesthetic intensity matches the kind of relationship being cultivated.

—> Does the aesthetic intensity of this object match the kind of relationship it is meant to sustain, and will it still feel right after repeated use over time?

2. Reciprocity


The dynamic between object and user is reciprocal. The design of objects should enable a relationship in which care is both given and received.

Care is relational and is enacted through regular practice. Designed objects must both express care for the user and invite care in return, rather than passive consumption.

Objects express care for the user through the intention embedded in their design. Considered ergonomics, thoughtful material selection, proportions, and attentiveness to context are not merely functional refinements; they signal a deliberate commitment to the user’s experience. For example, when a knife rests naturally in the hand, responds predictably, or feels proportionate to its surroundings, it communicates respect and responsibility. The user senses that care was present in its making, and they are as a result more likely to take good care of the object in return.
But care from the object’s side does not end at the moment of design. Objects can also be shaped to invite care in return in the form of maintenance over the course of their lives. Through durability, legibility, repairability, or material honesty, they can encourage attentiveness from the user. In this reciprocal dynamic, both user and object actively participate in sustaining the relationship over time. For example, a garment ornamented with intricate embroidery or beadwork requires gentle spot-cleaning, proper storage and mindful handling. But this attentive care is rewarded through added texture, detail, and unique expression. The exchange feels proportionate because the object’s aesthetic value justifies the user’s investment. However, a low quality, poorly constructed garment with fragile embellishments that make it difficult to clean, may not be perceived equally as worthy of the care it asks for.

—> Identify what an object offers, and what it asks of its user in return; time, attention and resources. Then ask whether that exchange feels proportionate, and whether it will remain so as circumstances change.




3. Legibility of care requirements


Objects should support the user in maintaining, adjusting, and repairing them; without imposing unnecessary burden for upkeep.

Engagement with an object does not require full exposure of its inner workings. What matters is that users feel capable of interacting with it—adjusting, cleaning, maintaining, or repairing—independently and without intimidation. This confidence doesn’t need to come from explicit instruction. Material coherence, intuitive construction, and consistent assembly logic can communicate how the object is meant to be handled without demanding technical expertise.

Transparency is not an absolute value here. Overexposure can create visual noise, anxiety, or a sense of obligation that discourages rather than invites engagement. Conversely, excessive concealment carries its own cost: when maintenance logic is opaque or access is deliberately restricted, users become dependent on expert intervention, and when that feels too burdensome, replacement becomes easier than repair. A caring object calibrates this balance by revealing enough to support agency, while withholding what would unnecessarily overwhelm.
Design for assembly for example, is a thoughtful approach to part design that considers how products can be made easier and safer to put together, both for assembly workers and end users. Through standardised components, snap-fits instead of special fasteners, self-locating shapes that avoid jamming, or asymmetrical parts that intuitively indicate the right orientation for assembly, an object can make legible how it is meant to be handled across its life cycle.

This principle extends to how materials communicate their needs. An object that honestly expresses its fragility, resilience, or required maintenance invites appropriate handling. A paper lampshade that must be dusted gently but diffuses light beautifully, a wooden cutting board that requires periodic oiling to remain durable and resistant to cracking, or leather shoes that reward regular polishing with protection, longevity, and a gradually deepening patina—these are invitations, not inconveniences.

When maintenance becomes a legible, manageable ritual rather than an opaque obligation, it can deepen familiarity and strengthen emotional attachment over time. The object earns continued care by making that care feel worthwhile.

—> How demanding is this object’s maintenance, and are those requirements clear and manageable? Does its materials and design encourage confident, independent engagement, or do they create intimidation and dependency?



4. Cultivate attentive engagement


Design should cultivate sensory attentiveness in the user when interacting with an object.

Interactions that are frictionless—immediate, automated, optimised for efficiency—run the risk of reducing engagement to passive or detached consumption. When the need for presence of mind is minimised, the relationship between the user and the object may become shallow or purely instrumental.

However, friction alone does not produce meaning. Poor usability, unnecessary complication, or exclusionary difficulty undermine care, and often leaves the user feeling overlooked or neglected. The idea is not to slow interactions indiscriminately, but to evaluate where attentiveness enriches experience, or where convenience genuinely supports well-being.

Certain practices gain value precisely because they require attentive effort: putting on a vinyl record by hand, repotting a houseplant, or sharpening a kitchen knife on a whetstone. These actions cultivate tacit knowledge, ritual, and a sense of acquired skill. The effort involved isn’t burdensome, but rather constitutive of the overall experience of the objects. Deliberate
friction is caring in these cases, because it strengthens connection and skill, slows perception and fosters presence of mind.

Whereas in other cases, seamlessness supports well-being by removing barriers, preventing cognitive overload, or ensuring safety. A smoke alarm works entirely in the background without requiring any user interaction or attention until there’s a problem. Robotic surgical systems like the da Vinci platform remove friction for the surgeon by translating their natural hand movements directly to precise instruments, so that their attention can remain focused on care for the patient.

Designers with attentiveness in mind should discern which interactions benefit from meaningful engagement and which should remain unobtrusive. Automation can also be caring when it reduces strain or increases accessibility.

Over time, repeated encounters with objects that invite increased perceptual attentiveness in users, can reinforce a systemic disposition of attentiveness, or habit of “noticing”, that carries over into our everyday lives, reinforcing a personal disposition of care.

—> When designing, carefully discern whether to design for increased convenience, or to add meaningful friction.



5. Emotional durability


The object’s physical longevity should correspond to its emotional durability. Objects designed to endure materially must be capable of remaining meaningful, adaptable, and responsible.

Care-based design requires distinguishing between what should endure and what should be transient. Designing an object for long physical durability without reflecting on its intended lifecycle, emotional relevance, and likely patterns of use risks producing artefacts that outlast their significance in people’s lives, contributing to material persistence without purpose. The ethical task of the designer is to evaluate whether an object justifies its material persistence and whether its continued existence supports responsible patterns of use.

Objects intended to become long term household staples— kept, repurposed, or passed on—are well suited for emotionally durable design. Such objects should neither prescribe rigid meaning nor rely solely on novelty for their appeal. Instead, they should possess enough character to invite attachment, while remaining open enough to evolve as needed. Leaving room for reinterpretation allows users to gradually develop their own associations and patterns of use surrounding an object, sustaining relevance and endearment across changing contexts, interiors, and life stages. This could also be supported by aesthetic restraint that reduces premature stylistic obsolescence. An object too anchored in a specific trend or cultural moment risks becoming irrelevant before it becomes worn.

Functional versatility is one practical expression of this principle: for example, a wooden table that works comfortably as a workspace, dining surface, or general gathering point, without signalling one correct mode of use. A table capable of transferring between contexts and taking on new identities can remain emotionally relevant even as circumstances change, such as when the owner moves, decides to repurpose it, or passes it on to others.

A degree of designed ambiguity can also sustain longterm intrigue: an object that reveals itself gradually, rewarding familiarity with a growing sense of ease or expertise, can remain actively enjoyable well past novelty. Like a coffee brewing setup that is initially difficult to master but becomes increasingly satisfying as skill develops with practice.

Emotional attachment cannot be designed directly, but the conditions that allow it to grow can be. Knowing when not to design for emotional or physical permanence is equally important. Not everything should be made to last, and recognising that distinction is itself an act of care.

—> Does this object justify its material longevity, and will it remain meaningful, adaptable, and open enough to evolve alongside the people who use it?



6. Material durability


The object’s aesthetic value should evolve through time, recognising evidence of use, maintenance, repair, and aging as integral to its life rather than signs of decline.

The cultural ideal of mint condition assumes that objects are most valuable immediately after production and that wear inevitably diminishes their worth. This assumption conflicts with slow consumption and design through a care lens. Instead, this lens recognises traces of use, maintenance, repair, and aging as meaningful aspects of an object’s life.

Designers must therefore consider not only how an object looks at the moment of manufacture, but how it will exist through time. Designing for long use periods requires more than physical durability. It involves choosing materials and forms that can accommodate change—scratches, softened edges, patina, discolouration— allowing these marks to integrate into the object’s evolving character rather than read as deterioration. Resin-rich heartwood pine cladding that silvers with age, copper that develops verdigris, leather that creases along patterns of grip and wear: these are materials that become more expressive with use and time.
But many materials used in design and architecture today do not typically age “beautifully”. Concrete facades will eventually accumulate stains from pollution, water streaks, moss, and cracks that require repairs. Polypropylene outdoor furniture will eventually become brittle, stained, and fade unevenly in the sunlight. These signs of aging are often culturally coded as cheapness, dirtiness or signs of neglect rather than character. Can objects made of materials that age “ugly” be designed so that even these less desirable forms of aging are anticipated and made to be acceptable parts of their identities? Regardless, this may require expanding our aesthetic acceptance beyond traditionally valued forms of aging.

Designing for material durability often means resisting strategies that simulate perpetual newness: fragile coatings, veneers, or finishes designed to conceal material reality rather than express it. When an object is designed to look the same regardless of how it has been lived with, aging becomes something to hide rather than something to read. When aesthetic value evolves alongside use, the passage of time becomes a continuation of the design rather than a failure of it.

—> How will this object look, and read after years of use, and does that trajectory strengthen or weaken its appeal? Choose materials and forms that can accommodate the marks of time without losing integrity.



7. Contextual sensitivity


Design should respond sensitively to the environments it enters, contributing responsibly to the shared mood, function, and cultural character of those spaces.

Objects participate in the formation of collective environments, beyond their relationship to any individual user. Scale, material presence, visual intensity, and durability all contribute to shared atmosphere. Aesthetic decisions accumulate: across a room, a street, a neighbourhood, a culture. A designer working on one object is, in a small way, working on all of them. This does not mean anonymity is the ideal. An object can have a distinct presence while remaining sensitive to its surroundings. Sensitivity means awareness of that relational impact.
In shared and public environments, this responsibility becomes more acute. The design and placement of public seating, for instance, influences how—and who—feels welcome to gather and spend time together. Objects can encourage participation in communal life, or reinforce social exclusion through deliberate discomfort and rigidly defined use. Even within the home, objects contribute to the prevailing atmosphere: of calm or clutter, care or neglect, openness or enclosure.

Contextual sensitivity asks designers to consider not only how an object performs individually, but how it contributes to the larger accumulated aesthetic and social atmosphere—and whose experience of this atmosphere it shapes.

—> What environment will this object enter, and what does it add to that environment—in terms of atmosphere, social dynamic, and cultural tone? Consider how it sits in relation to its surroundings, and whose experience it supports or complicates.



8. Transparency of consequence


Design should avoid concealing the ecological, material, and social conditions that sustain the object’s existence. Instead, it should allow these relationships to remain perceptible where appropriate.

Designed objects do not exist in isolation. They are embedded within ecological, economic, infrastructural, and cultural systems—material extraction, production methods, labour conditions, transportation, use, and disposal should be considered part of the aesthetic judgement of an object, not secondary to it.

This principle does not demand full transparency. Instead, it resists aesthetic strategies that actively distance users from material and social realities. A closely cropped lawn reads as elegant and refined, but that appearance is only sustained through chemical treatment, excessive water use, and the elimination of ecological diversity. The aesthetic experience is coherent precisely because the costs have been made invisible. Similarly, a plastic cutting board can communicate hygiene and convenience, while imperceptibly shedding microplastics during use (and being irreparable once worn). The health and ecological consequences embedded in the material of the object are obscured by its aesthetic language of cleanliness and convenience.

While fashion and food industries have strict labelling requirements that make sourcing and composition visible, furniture exists largely without 
such expectations of engrained legibility. A wooden table might communicate warmth and natural beauty through its aesthetic language while obscuring whether the wood was harvested sustainably, how far it travelled, or under what labour conditions it was processed. Can declarations about material origin be embedded in the design of furniture?

Beyond language, a caring object could communicate its “past life” by allowing aspects of its material origin, assembly logic, aging process, or eventual disassembly to remain legible. Exposed joinery communicates how something was put together and how it can come apart. Traditional construction techniques hint at the human labour involved in production. Metal objects with visible tool marks reveal whether they were cast, forged or machined.

These are aesthetic choices that keep the user in an honest relationship with the object and the systems that produced it. The goal is not to confront, but to make aware. When consequences are not aesthetically concealed, engagement becomes more considered—and the user is invited to recognise their own participation in broader networks of production, labour, and waste.

—> What does this object conceal about its own making, aging, or eventual disassembly, and is that concealment necessary, or does it distance the user from consequence? Consider whether material choices, construction logic, or surface treatment could allow systemic participation to remain perceptible where appropriate.