A Life-centred Design Project
How might a small business be a force for sustainability and kindness?
Applying life-centred design to a small business, its products, and its relationships with its customers
About
Life-centred design asks businesses to expand their purpose by aligning it with global goals and regenerating what it impacts and from which it takes.
The life-centred purpose is the higher purpose that the product or service becomes a part of.
For example, American clothing retailer, Patagonia is part of one of the largest polluters in the world.
- Developed environmental and animal welfare responsibility programs to guide production
- Ensure safe, fair, legal and humane working conditions for many factories in their supply chain
- Use discarded fishing nets as garment materials
The Subject
A book about life-centred design can’t just talk about life-centred design strategies, it has to embody them, be designed with them, and be a life-centred design project itself.
Below are the results of using the tool to create a life-centred design and purpose for The Life-centred Design Guide and its business model.
The Life-centred Purpose Tool
The Life-centred Purpose Tool ↗ is a brainstorming exercise to explore aligning the purpose of your product, business, or personal projects with global goals (such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals).
Evolved over decades of work by the UN in conjunction with over 170 countries, the SDGs are 17 interconnected global goals that form ‘a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, at present and into the future’.
I also determined a primary non-human to nurture—Trees, as used for the paper in my books.
I created a non-human persona for Trees to understand more deeply their needs and my business impacts to guide life-centred innovation.
6 Life-centred Commitments
Using The Life-centred Purpose Tool ↗, I aligned the book design, lifecycle, and business system of the Life-centred Design Guide with 5 Global Goals:
- Quality education
- Reduced inequalities
- Climate action
- Life on land
- Responsible consumption and production
Considering the impact of my business system and the global goals it impacted, the tools produced 6 Life-centred Commitments, which can also be grouped according to the ESG framework ↗.
1. Reducing waste
Utilising print-on-demand and providing guidance to customers for keeping the book circular
#environment
2. Regenerating trees
Donating a portion of sales of the printed guidebook to onetreeplanted.org
#environment
3. Reducing energy consumption
Evolve digital channels to embrace more sustainable digital practices to reduce energy consumption
#environment
4. Fostering the pluriverse
Keeping Indigenous People’s sustainable and regenerative practices in the conversation
#social
5. Fostering open-source
Providing free information and tools and exercises with a license to remix and reshare
#social
These commitments give one little book a greater purpose that contributes to global environmental and social goals
See the adherence to these commitments on the About page.
Explore your life-centred purpose
Take the lead
Lead the way by redesigning your products and business to reduce environmental and social harm and regenerate the people and environments your system relies on.
“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.”
