Reflections on the Usefulness and Limitations of Tools for Life-Centred Design

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the practical usefulness and limitations of life-centred design tools through workshops involving practitioners, highlighting their role in fostering systems thinking and considering more-than-human perspectives.

Contribution

It introduces a process for implementing life-centred design tools in projects, based on empirical insights from workshops with practitioners using case study tools.

Findings

Tools support systems thinking and actor identification

Tools reveal knowledge gaps in design teams

Proposed process aids integration of life-centred design

Abstract

Life-centred design decenters humans and considers all life and the far-reaching impacts of design decisions. However, little is known about the application of life-centred design tools in practice and their usefulness and limitations for con-sidering more-than-human perspectives. To address this gap, we carried out a se-ries of workshops, reporting on findings from a first-person study involving one design academic and three design practitioners. Using a popular flat-pack chair as a case study, we generatively identified and applied four tools: systems maps, actant maps, product lifecycle maps and behavioural impact canvas. We found that the tools provided a structured approach for practising systems thinking, identifying human and non-human actors, understanding their interconnected-ness, and surfacing gaps in the team's knowledge. Based on the findings, the pa-per proposes a process for implementing life-centred design tools in design pro-jects.