The Life-centred Design Guide
A toolkit for product engineers, digital designers, and business innovators to design regenerative and socially just solutions—includes exercises and downloadable tools
#2 Amazon Best Seller in Engineering Design, Dec ’22
“This book stands as a remarkable resource in our field”
Life-centred design expands human-centred design to include consideration for nature and vulnerable humans by merging practices such as circular design, biomimicry, systems thinking, and futuring, and aligning designers with global goals, such as the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.
As it is still emerging, however, life-centred design is practised by only a few, and how it is practised varies.
The Life-centred Design Guide summarises these various approaches to synthesise a ‘future snapshot’ of what an evolved framework might be, with tools and instructions included.
The guide also provides introductions to 11 key supporting practices so you can start implementing them now:
- Circular design
- Inclusive design
- Pluriversal design
- Systems thinking
- Distributed design
- Sustainable web design
- Behavioural design
- Interspecies design
- Biomimicry
- Foresight
- Human-centred design
“Super helpful tools for designers… I’ll be sharing them with the students.”
“The ideas really resonated with me as I’ve felt this growing unease with human centred design’s echo chamber”
“An amazing book about the topic.”
The Life-centred Design Guide is accompanied by an online Resource Hub, containing design tools and resources to implement the method.
Support the trees used to make this book
The Life-centred Design Lab respects the trees cut down to make the books, so we made a persona for them to generate ideas on how to reduce our harm and regenerate them.
Our books have planted 100 trees so far, by donating to onetreeplanted.org—you can donate too
You can be a caretaker for trees, too, by stewarding the natural resources of this book, too.
Maintain and repair—See wikihow.com/Repair-a-Paperback-Book for ways to:
- Clean the book
- Repair loose and torn pages
- Reattach a cover
- Fix the binding
- Use an environmentally friendly craft glue
Give the book a second life—Dont throw out old books, pass the book on to someone who can use it:
- A friend
- A school
- Drop it in at a local library
- Pop it in a street library box
Recycle—If you can’t give the book away, give the paper a second life by recycling, so check your local rules to make sure you can drop it in the paper recycling bin.
Regenerate—Help give back to the trees cut down by donating to onetreeplanted.org.
lifecentred.design collaborates with futurescouting.com.au to donate a portion of book sales, too!
Your LCD book is the most “tortured” book that I own, with all the personal notes of associations and ideas that it gave me. Love it!
Ewelina Schraven | Researcher & Teacher, Sustainable Strategy and Innovation
