Creating Ritual

We’re not Reconstructionist Jews, but I’ve always appreciated the existence of Ritualwell, which is a site that provides ritual ideas (both from the staff and user-generated) to fill in the gaps.  There aren’t really rituals formally in place in Judaism for things such as infertility or miscarriage.  But that site helps create “deliberate action performed in a set sequence that improves our emotional state, by reframing an experience in a way that feels meaningful.”  You know, ritual.

Ritual Design Lab is doing the same thing for the secular.  It’s creating rituals for people who don’t follow a religion but want to tap into an action that makes a person feel better.  And they’re using design to make it happen since, like design, ritual and objects are both created with the user in mind.  They’re also using established religion and making it easier to access those rituals.  That article in The Atlantic muses that “For a person who’s walked away from institutionalized religion, it may be psychologically easier to join the National Day of Unplugging than to observe the Sabbath, the original 24-hour digital detox.”  Though the article also points out the dangers of separating the ritual from the religion.

I thought it was interesting; the idea of taking a life situation problem and approaching it like a designer.  What can you do to make a ritual more usable?  What can you do to adapt ritual so it takes into account the user today vs. the user of yesteryear?  I’m not big on change, but I also think that we sometimes hit a point where a ritual no longer fits the current population.  And then, perhaps, it’s time to change the ritual instead of expecting people to move backwards to meet the ritual.

What do you think?