Life-centred design is an emerging design approach that expands human-centred design to also include consideration of sustainable, environmental, and social implications. It connects micro-level design (UX, product engineering, etc.) to global goals by increasing the stakeholders from just ‘user and business’ to ‘user, non-user, local and global communities, ecosystems, and planetary boundaries’.

Some of its supporting practices have been practised for decades but are still ‘emerging’ into mainstream design, while others are new and just finding their legs—circular design, systems thinking, and biomimicry, to name a few.

Life-centred design’s wider stakeholder view connects product and experience designers working at the micro-level with global environmental and social goals at the macro-level, such as those of the Doughnut Economy and UN Sustainability Goals.

The Doughnut Economy is an alternative economic model to today’s dominant take, make, and throw away mentality. Introduced with the book “Doughnut Economics” by acclaimed economist Kate Raworth in 2017, the Doughnut represents a “safe operating zone” between an outer ring of planetary boundaries that we should not overreach, and an inner ring of safe, just, meaningful, and thriving existence that all peoples must remain above. The space in between these two thresholds is the Doughnut, the target area where all activities should be focused in terms of outcomes and impacts.

The United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) are 17 interconnected global goals aiming to ‘end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity’.

Life-centred design also reconfigures today’s idea of a product’s lifespan from being purchase-use-discard to including the extraction of raw materials from the earth, the processing into parts and transportation and selling, to their first use. Discard leads into circular loops of reuse, repair, refurbishment, and recycling, with all waste converted into a resource for some other part of the system.

This extended and looping product lifecycle is framed within the circular economy which aims to keep raw materials in use for as long as possible to extend their value, and to reduce the need and energy to extract anymore.

Viewing the product in its true lifecycle also helps view the product as a system of actors and relationships that spans years more than human-centred design has us consider and impacts multiple human and environmental systems over that longer lifespan.

Articles

More about Life-centred Design ↗

10 design practices combine in life-centred design ↗

Videos

Life-centred Futures ↗ —My lecture for the Responsible Design for Innovation course at The University of Sydney

The Futures Of Design ↗ —My presentation to the awesome Woolies X Design team

Introduction to LCD booklet ↓

Diverse perspectives

4 women who made modern design more life-centred ↗

The First Nations roots of life-centred thinking ↗

10 life-centred design approaches ↗

Bruce Mau’s 24 Principles for life-centred design ↗

The Life-centred Design Guide resources for further learning ↗