Flow and Interflow: The Design Principles of Cooperative Mandala Coloring (CMC)

Abstract

Design is an activity with creativeness that can be deemed as a life-philosophy for exploring from flow of individuals to group interflow. This Study aims to combine Western psychology and Oriental dynamic meditation activities on basis of Flow Theory by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Carl Gustav Jung’s in depth psychological analysis and concept of Mandala, to develop an extended cooperative mandala coloring (CMC) and to attempt on proposing the design principle of CMC. Through researching the collective unconscious for specific groups at specific ages, the Bildung education for newbie designers. The subjects of this study are 14 students from Taiwanese junior high and senior high schools who jointly participated the APDEC 2017 held in Japan in August 2017 with the researcher. The three approaches of action research are taken on basis of study objectives. First, “Pre-action Research”, which involves redesign of the individual mandala coloring activity by Jung to Cooperative Mandala Coloring; then, “In-action Research”, which involves interpretation of Jung phenomena by Mandala works by the adolescents; lastly, “Post-action Research” for introspection on overall effects for facilitation of flow and interflow. Through CMC activities, this study discovers that adolescents can not only satisfy their own expressed needs but also situate themselves in spiritual safe space in order to facilitate themselves to obtain self-organization at the transient moment of conversion to complexity when at the status of being empathized, while opening up to reveal the self for broadening the experiences in interflow with others.