Out life-centred business commitments
The Life-centred Design Lab commits to evolve itself as a business entity to be less harmful and more regenerative
Using our privilege and value to regenerate and heal, the LCD Lab uses its products, percentage of profits, and channels to further foster the transition of modern design to be more sustainable, regenerative, and socially just by considering all peoples, all animals, and all planet.
Using the power we have, we support this goal with the following Commitments:
1. Reducing waste
Utilising self-publishing print-on-demand service to reduce waste and Providing in-book instructions on how to keep the book maintained, repaired, and circular to reduce waste
2. Regenerating trees
Making donations from sales of printed books to onetreeplanted.org↗ to regenerate the trees cut down
3. Reducing energy and carbon
Committing to improving the sustainability of our website to reduce energy consumption and carbon output
4. Nurturing diversity
Reducing marginalisation and fostering the pluriverse by elevating the history of Indigenous sustainability, systems thinking, and regeneration in design conversations
5. Transparency
We hold ourselves accountable by publishing our life-centred commitments and updates for anyone to access
6. Open-source
Fostering open-source content by providing free information, tools, and exercises with licenses to remix and reshare
7. Supporting greater change
Supporting random and grass root efforts that fight for greater change
Our commitments support the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals:
The following actions support our ongoing commitments
In partnership with futurescouting.com.au↗, lifecentred.design donates from sales of printed books to onetreeplanted.org↗ to replenish the trees cut down to make paper.
12/06/23 – Payment to onetreeplanted.org↗
(US$20/AUD$30)
12/06/23 – Payment to onetreeplanted.org↗
(US$20/AUD$30)
15/11/22 – Payment to onetreeplanted.org↗
(US$20/AUD$30)
14/09/22 – Payment to onetreeplanted.org↗
(US$13/AUD$20)
12/06/23 – Payment to onetreeplanted.org↗
(US$47/AUD$73)
May ’23 – Site Redesign
The Life-centred Design Guide and related information originally lived on futurescouting.com.au ↗ where it shared content with my other design book Future Scouting and all its related futuring content. Over time, the two practices became too big to share a site so I finally split them up.
This site was the resulting new, stand-alone site for life-centre design with average page loads 3X faster and a higher accessibility rating.
Oct ’22 – Sustainable Web Improvements
Using sustainable web guidelines, I made the following improvements to my home page, one of the highest traffic pages:
- Converted main PNG Logo (93KB/56KB) to an SVG (26KB)
- Reduced various image sizes
- Reduced use of a custom font to only headers
- Replaced light backgrounds with darker colours
- Removed a ‘subscribe’ plugin, swapping it for a button linking to another page where the plugin already existed
These changes resulted in an estimated:
- Reduction of carbon generated per visit from 403kg/yr to 20kg/yr
- 1 second increase in page load speed
Getting there with small steps!
Nov ’22 – Sustainable Digital Improvements
Using sustainable web guidelines, I made the following improvements to my home page:
- Implemented and tested an information carousel, then removed it due to lack of engagement and energy impact
- Identified and merged repetitive links/content
- Replaced images displayed by external URLs with self-hosted optimised and cached images
I also made the following improvements to my entire site:
- Switched to green hosting
- Improved caching
- Automatic file optimisation
- Lazy loading
These changes resulted in an estimated:
- A reduction of up to 2/3 less carbon generated per visit per page
- A reduction of up to 2/3 less energy used to load per page
Sep ’23 – $65 donation to Green Peace to support legal action for climate justice
Climate change is a threat to us all. But right now, Pacific communities are being hit hardest by the impact of the growing climate disaster – paying heavily for our fossil fuel addiction despite contributing the least to it.
Governments of big polluting countries are stalling, but we need action now. The Pacific is leading the fight for climate justice, taking government responsibility for climate change to the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice.
Greenpeace is working to document evidence of the impact of climate change on communities, amplify the voices of those most urgently impacted, and build an undeniable case for climate justice.
Take the lead
Life-centred design aligns designers and businesses with global goals, and gives them the skills to respond to today’s wicked problems in practical and measurable ways.
#2 Amazon Best Seller in Engineering Design, Dec ’22
“The ideas really resonated with me as I’ve felt this growing unease with human centred design’s echo chamber”
“Super helpful tools for designers… I’ll be sharing them with the students.”
“An amazing book about the topic.”
