In 2020, I joined the LUMA Institute — an organization that empowers people to be more visual, imaginative, inquisitive, collaborative, iterative and empathetic through using human-centered design principles.

One of the foundational beliefs of LUMA is working towards achieving universal design literacy. A decade ago, the CEO and co-founder of LUMA, Chris Pacione, wrote an invigorating article on the “case for design literacy” that urges us to re-think some elements of education.

Universal design literacy is the belief that every person should have access to basic design knowledge. Just as we learn math and history in school, we should also learn design principles. Being design literate means having skills in inquiry, ideation, prototyping and evaluation amongst others. This is not suggesting that every person become a Designer with a capital “D” in their future title, but rather that we gain basic competencies of the practice. We learn math, but most people do not go on to be mathematicians. Similarly, design literacy is about exposing everyone to design so that they can be creative problem solvers no matter where their career takes them.

A common misconception is that design is just about making things pretty, but in reality, design is about moving from the current state to a preferred state regardless of the industry or challenge. Design is a way of thinking, and to many, it is synonymous with creative problem-solving. Creativity isn’t something that is inherently inside someone (another misconception); you can foster creativity using design techniques. To cultivate a “designerly way of thinking” (Cross, 1982), you must understand fundamental building blocks of design including the processes, methods, tools, principles, heuristics, and behaviors of the discipline.

Learning design and becoming design literate involves doing design. There are a number of education theories and movements like experiential learning (Kolb, 1984), learning by doing (Dewey, 1986), and project-based learning emerging from situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) that support this notion of learning in practice. As part of achieving universal design literacy, we need to find ways to support learning design through also doing design.

2020 has been an unprecedented year — we have seen a global pandemic uproot traditional corporations, education systems, and ways we interact with humans on a daily basis. This year also shined a spotlight on the systemic injustices embedded into the systems we create as humans.

I think there is an argument now, maybe more than ever, for universal design literacy. If basic design principles and behaviors— like cultivating empathy, challenging the status quo, and collaborating with diverse people—were embedded into us, then we would work towards designing with humility and creating systems that consider all human beings.

Design is good for business, as has been proven by firms like McKinsey and reports from Design Management Institute. But I’d argue that design is good for society. As humans, we create everything in the world around us. This computer I’m typing on was designed. The coffee mug I am drinking from was designed. The process for how the coffee was produced and distributed was designed. This platform, Medium, was designed as a new service of social journalism. The government of your country was designed. Laws were designed. Education systems were designed. When you realize that everything was designed (products, processes, services, systems) across every industry, you can begin to understand why we need to be design literate. If we are designing every day, yet lack the fundamental principles of design like empathy, collaboration and questioning, then we will keep missing the mark on the things we create — continuing to leave people out of the equation. I am a firm believer that if we equip everyone with design competencies that we will get better at designing for the social good of society.

I envision a future where everyone considers themselves part “designer” and that they have the access to design tools to improve the world around them. I believe that if we work to embed design into educational curriculum and/or re-imagine what design education could be that this can become a reality. Imagine that as a child, you learned the principles of design, just like your math, science, reading, and history classes. At LUMA, we use the catchphrase that we are making design accessible from “from pre-k to gray”, which means that regardless of age, you can learn and apply design principles to your work and life.

This is no small challenge. Many organization are working toward universal design literacy in some capacity, whether through trying to change stigmas and stereotypes (i.e. designing/making for girls) or through democratizing design education. I have attempted to highlight a number of these organizations to raise awareness and continue this conversation.

• LUMA Institute — created system for innovation that can be applied to any challenge, platform of resources, and provides design education and training
• Design for America — design for social impact; student-led studios at universities and colleges across the US (44 and growing each year)
• Desklight Learning — using design to transform learning experiences
• Girl Possible — empowering girls to become change-makers through design
• Girl Garage — for girls to fear less and build more
• GoldieBlox — STEM toy company inspiring girls to be makers/engineers
• Project Invent — empowering students to be designers and innovators
• The Teacher’s Guild — transforming teaching through creativity and design
• PBLworks — initiative to embed project-based learning into K-12 education
• IDEO.org — non-profit design studio with free tools to get started
• OpenIDEO — puts the power of human-centered design in the hands of many through real-world challenges and initiatives
• theDesignExchange — open-source innovation and case study archive
• Participate in Design — Singapore based community design studio
• Design Thinking 101 Podcast — learn about design thinking through stories
• Design Innovation Modules — platform with free learning modules on design methods
• MOOCs (massive open online courses), like edX, Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, P2PU, and LinkedIn Learning (previously Lynda), that offer self-paced courses on various design topics

Democratizing design education is essential to making design knowledge accessible and equitable. How might we break-down barriers to accessing design education? How might we reduce misconceptions about what design means? How might we find ways to teach design through doing? How might we achieve universal design literacy?

As Nobel laureate Herbert Simon famously said, “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”

In Simon’s eyes, we are all designers. Now, we just have to empower people with the skills to believe they are designers, too.

If you have any thoughts or ideas on achieving universal design literacy or if you know of other organizations or programs working to achieve this goal in any capacity, please leave a comment or send me a message. I’d love to continue to update this post with more resources!

Disclaimer: This post is my own thoughts and opinions, and is not associated with LUMA Institute or any of the other organizations listed throughout.

It’s 2020 and we need universal design literacy was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” — Marcel Proust

The power of travel is that you develop a new way of seeing the world. It has the ability to shift your perspective on everything.

By traveling and experiencing new cultures you realize that the way you live is not normal. Well, it’s not not normal, too. In fact, there are no normals, just a thousand different ways to do similar activities.

As humans, we habituate what we experience in our daily lives. The routine annoyances and frustrations— like our travel coffee mug spilling because it’s not properly sealed or forgetting to pick up more toothpaste for the 3rd day in a row— become normalized. Because we repeat these actions again, and again, and again, and never ask… is there a better way to solve this problem? For example, could toothpaste be delivered to your home every 3-months? Goodbye, late night store runs. Hello, quip and Amazon dash buttons.

So what’s the secret to innovating? Step 1 is to start noticing.

So many of us have been conditioned to see the world “as is” instead of how it could be improved. Tony Fadell explores this concept in his 2015 TED talk. Fadell is an innovator who notices the frustrations of daily life and then figures out solutions to solve them— he is known for designing the first iPod and co-founding Nest, which revolutionized home connectivity.

Traveling is an opportunity to take a step-back from our daily lives and begin to cultivate a beginner’s mind — embodying openness and rejecting preconceptions to reframe the ordinary world around us.

IDEO, a pioneer in human-centered design practice, uses a technique called “thoughtless acts” to document the thousands of mindless acts we engage in throughout the day. These collection of pictures and stories can help designers gain empathy and innate understanding of how people interact with the world — like those commuting to work.

Sometimes being innovative isn’t about creating radical systemic change (it can be), but it’s about changing tiny things that can make a huge difference. In Paul Bennett’s 2005 TED talk, he discusses how the best design is in the small details.

“Seeing things for the first time, seeing things afresh, and using that as an opportunity to create new possibilities.” — Paul Bennett

Studies have also linked traveling and engaging in diverse cultures to increased creativity — a second important ingredient towards innovation.

Adam Galinsky says that traveling increases cognitive flexibility — or the ability to jump between different ideas, which is part of developing creative solutions. Adam Grant discusses in his book Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World that working abroad makes you more creative. “Juxtaposing different world views lets you come up with new possibilities,” Grant says. And if you don’t have time to fully immerse yourself in a new culture, then you can take small steps closer to home — make friends from different cultures and get to know their stories, their food, and their heritage.

If traveling is too expensive or if you don’t have the time, you can travel locally and get the same essence of the experience. Go to the next closest city or even be a tourist in your own town and re-discover the people and places for the first time all over again. Or go to the airport or the train station and watch people come and go, noticing the individual actions and behaviors. Pay attention to small details that you easily ignore in your habituated daily life.

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place that you occupy in the world.” — Gustav Flaubert

It’s been 3 months since I packed two large suitcases and boarded a 17-hour flight back across the Pacific Ocean from Singapore to the US. As I reflect on my time living in Asia, I realize that traveling and living abroad has made me a better designer, researcher, educator and innovator. Travel changed my perspectives on the world — it can make you uncomfortable at times, but in that uncomfort is the opportunity shift your mindset and grow.

And there is science supporting that travel increases your happiness (!!!). As Laurie Santos discusses in her Yale course on the Science of Well-Being, in order to be happy you should invest your time and money on experiences (like travel!) and not on “stuff”. As an avid traveler, this all seems like a win-win-win situation to me.

So next time you’re on the way to the airport or taking the bus into town try and adopt a beginner’s mindset and see the world again for the first time. Channel your inner child-like wonder. You might be surprised at how it leads to more creative problem solving in your daily life.

Carlye is a design researcher, innovation strategist, and enthusiastic instructor who blends human-centered design practice with systems thinking approaches. Carlye has lived and worked in Singapore, Australia, and the US. To learn more about her and her work, visit www.carlyelauff.com.

Would you believe me if I told you that you could learn the fundamental principles and mindsets of prototyping by baking a cake? You might be a bit skeptical at first, but I promise that you’ll see the connections between them.

The essence of prototyping is about “getting your hands dirty”, so what better way to experience prototyping than through experimenting with flavors and mixing raw ingredients together to create decadent desserts? Plus, I just really really really like cake. And analogies.

To put your best foot…I mean food…forward when prototyping, especially if you’re new at it, you’ll want to incorporate these prototyping mindsets into your practice.

• bias towards action — stop talking and start doing, as in stop talking about the holiday cookies you want to make this season and get out the ingredients from the cupboard and just start baking
• build to think — use each prototype and the “failures” that occur as learning opportunities, as in when your first batch of cookies burn to a crisp learn to keep them at a lower temperature or less time in the oven for the next batch you make
• practice non-attachment — listen to users’ feedback without defending your ideas, as in when someone tells you they wish the brownies you made were “doughier” you don’t get offended and argue back, but rather figure out how to tweak the recipe for them next time
• create to communicate — if a picture is worth a thousands words then a prototype is worth a thousand pictures, as in you can talk about making these ingenious new cake pop cupcakes, but no one really understands what they are until you finally show them a sketch, picture, or sample

So let’s get started. This cake isn’t going to bake itself! Be ready to embrace flour in your hair, to pick egg-shells out of the mixing bowl, and understand that frosting will get on everything. Design is a messy process, so it’s important to learn to embrace the figurative and literal mess around you.

First, you need to understand your design challenge. In this scenario, you need to create a wedding cake for Anna and Charlie — a couple from Chicago who want a unique cake that represents them and has a “wow” factor. They also want the cake to be delicious, likely three different flavors, fit into their wedding/color theme, and feed 150 people. Just like any design challenge there are many requirements embedded into the design brief, some specific and some vague. You need to work with your client to better understand the requirements, since those will impact the prototypes you build.

Understand your stakeholders. Anna and Charlie are your most important stakeholders since they are simultaneously the client, user, and consumer. You need to understand their apparent and latent needs. You’ll want to involve them throughout the process, especially in terms of testing prototypes.

Sage wisdom from Alberto Savoia, the former Google Innovation Agitator and first Engineering Director, “Make sure you are building the right ‘it’, before you build ‘it’ right.” Focus on making sure you are making the right “thing” [i.e. cake] before you spend all the time, money, and energy making something that no one wants. Now this might seem counter-intuitive, but the best way to make sure you are building the “right it” is through building low-fidelity prototypes and rapidly testing and engaging with your users.

Very simple prototypes, often 2D hand sketches, are effective to communicate the key elements of the design challenge and/or potential solutions with clients and users. Instead of sitting around a table talking about this “dream wedding cake”, it is more valuable to sketch the general form of the cake and then use this as a medium to enhance discussions with Anna and Charlie to ensure you understand what they want. As humans, we are visual thinkers so combining words with drawn images will improve communication. I guarantee you’ll walk away from the meeting with a new perspective.

From the outside, a cake might sounds like a simple product. However, a cake can be incredibly complex — there are various sizes and shapes, flavors and colors, textures and layers, decorations and overall aesthetics to consider. There is also the process of baking a cake — the types of ingredients, the order of preparation, temperature and time in the oven, amongst many other steps. You also engage ALL of the human senses in the experience of eating cake. The taste, smell, sight, sound, and touch points. All of these factors need to be considered when prototyping.

Understand the most critical aspects of your concept and use that to guide prototype development. Prototypes help to mitigate risk, and as such, they should test the riskiest parts of your idea. In this scenario, you decide that the flavors of the cake are the most critical aspects to get right first. If you get these elements wrong, then you will have some very unhappy clients. So how do you prototype these different flavors?

As Tom Chi, the former Head of Experience at Google X says, his prototyping rule #1 is “find the quickest path to experience.” You want to navigate the fastest path to test the prototype with real users. For baking a cake, this does not necessarily mean baking the whole cake and presenting it to Anna and Charlie. Instead, think about what you can make in the least amount of time with the fewest materials to test the core aspects — the flavors — in this case.

Prototyping strategies are approaches that can help you find the simplest path to experience. They allow you to make in a meaningful way. Finding this “quickest path” can take years of practice and training. Now, you wouldn’t expect to become the next Great British Bake Off champion tomorrow if you just learned how to bake today, right? Just like you shouldn’t expect to become a master at effective prototyping after one project. For prototyping the flavors of the wedding cake, I picked three strategies to use. And remember, these prototypes need to be tested with the stakeholders — in this case, Anna and Charlie. Their feedback will guide the next iteration of prototypes to create.

• Sub-system isolation — break down complex problem into smaller parts and then prototype those smaller pieces. In this scenario, you are only prototyping the flavors. You forget about the other elements of the wedding cake like decorations, size, shape, and aesthetics.
• Parallel prototyping — building two or more concepts at the same time to compare insights. Here, we test multiple flavors at the same time. You can compare the lemon cake against three other cake flavors and also with four fillings and four frostings.
• Scaling — prototyping at a larger or smaller scale, typically whichever is easier and quicker to do. Since the final cake will be very tall, we choose to shrink down the scale to test in a “bite-size” manner.

You would never deliver the first wedding cake that you make to Anna and Charlie, just like you would never make one prototype and deliver that to your client on any other project. You need to build multiple prototypes, rapidly iterating on them through your learnings, before handing over the final product.

In this case, you learn from the flavor prototypes that they prefer the chocolate cake with raspberry filling and vanilla buttercream, and also the combination of almond cake with lemon curd and buttercream icing. A next logical step in prototyping this cake would be to bake a small (but complete) cake that incorporates all of the flavors together. You would also want to prototype the “wow” factor of the aesthetics on the outside of the cake, since this is another critical aspect. You can use similar strategies, like parallel prototyping or scaling, to explore the decorations, shape, size, and aesthetics of the cake. Early prototypes to communicate this “wow” factor can be sketches or pictures, before committing to decorating an entire cake. Remember: think about how to prototype the most critical aspects of the design in the simplest form that allow for meaningful feedback from users.

You can, and should, prototype throughout the entire design process. Think about the cake sketches during the problem framing. You can prototype in your first meeting with a client. As the design process unfolds, prototypes evolve and become more complex as the solution or product is refined. You constantly and iteratively build and test the most critical elements, culminating those learnings into your final design.

Prototypes are extremely powerful tools. They enhance human interactions by improving communication between the design team and various stakeholders, and they allow rapid learning-decision making cycles to occur. Understanding the power of prototypes and practicing these mindsets — bias towards action, build to think, non-attachment, and create to communicate — will be your secret ingredients in your next design challenge.

Some background: I believe that the idea for this article was subconsciously planted in my brain a couple of years ago when I read Carissa Carter’s post “Let’s stop talking about THE design process.” The analogies between design and cooking are powerful, and reading that article resonated with me as a fellow design educator. At the same time, I was conducting my PhD research on “prototyping in the wild”, and I started developing lessons and tools to help novices learn about prototyping mindsets and practices. Merge these two complimentary ideas together — and BOOM! — you have food + design + baking + prototypes all combined into one delicious analogy.

You want to learn to prototype? First, bake a cake. was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So, why not practice what I preach. Leading up to my birthday this year, I felt the need to pause from my typical fast-paced lifestyle and reflect on this previous year. Because well, it was quite the year.

2018 easily takes the cake for the biggest moments in my life shoved into less than 300 days. From successfully defending my PhD (you can call me DR. Carl :D !!!), training for and finishing my first Ironman 70.3 in Boulder, completing a three week U.S. National Parks road-trip, moving to Singapore for a two-year postdoc, AND… becoming engaged while skiing in March and then marrying Ben in September (oh, and planning a wedding in ~4 months). Yeah, you could say it has been one helluva year.

I have come to realize that it is easy to view life through the lens of how many big moments you have. And, I am sad to say that I am one to often use this metric to evaluate my life. One of the problems with big moments is that after they are gone you can feel empty. All of your energy goes into the planning, build up, and anticipation of the event. And then in a matter of minutes or hours that big moment is well… to put it bluntly, gone. Of course, you have memories and likely photos to capture the time, but this doesn’t make it any less difficult to deal with the after effects. The spiraling aftermath can have detrimental mental health effects on many people, including myself.

So in learning this about myself, I started to reframe the importance of moments. And, frankly, I’m coming to realize now that the smallest moments should be given equal, if not greater, importance because those are the ones you can have every single day.

These small moments of joy are what can keep you going when things are tough. And believe me, we all have tough days. For me, identifying these small moments of joy in my daily life has been a powerful tool: enjoying a flat white coffee, trying new cafes, practicing yoga, going for a walk, reading a chapter of a book, journaling, looking at maps, tending to the garden, experimenting when cooking, listening to a thunderstorm, practicing mindfulness, FaceTiming my mom, and learning new skills or sports (like my current endeavors with tennis and squash taught by my husband — TBD how well this goes). In this upcoming year, I am learning to embrace all of these small moments in a big way.

What small moments bring you the most joy? How can you incorporate these moments more into your daily life?

In reflecting on this year, I realized it is also important to note the times I tried and “failed” or lacked action towards my goals. These are opportunities for lessons learned, as well as ripe places to push forward in the coming year to put actions to my words. This past year, I had job applications straight rejected. My academic papers torn to shreds. I tried to launch the Till School in Colorado and couldn’t. I tried to help the CU Boulder DFA community grow, but saw a decline in participation. I kept talking about creating a website for consulting business, but never made anything. I talked about documenting my travels, and yet I haven’t. I started 20 different blog posts and never posted any of them. I said I’d make more phone calls and write more letters, but I haven’t. I didn’t make “me time” a priority for fear of being seen as lazy. I haven’t been able to mend relationships even though I deeply want to. I’m not listing these things to make me sad, but rather because I want to see the areas where I can grow, and more importantly, where I want to grow.

What have you been talking about doing, but yet haven’t yet taken action towards doing? How can you take small steps towards action in areas where you wish to grow?

“You overestimate what you can do in a day, but you underestimate what you can achieve in a year.”

This quote is the essence of my daily life, and I would suspect many others. At the end of each day, I feel frustrated with myself that I didn’t achieve enough in 24 hours — thoughts like “if only I didn’t hit snooze twice… why didn’t I make the most of my time on the commute to work… I shouldn’t have watched that third episode on Netflix…” run through my head and I judge myself for not doing more with my time.

But then when you look back on the whole year, as I am now, I am utterly shocked at how much I’ve done. I’ve learned to give myself some slack on a daily basis and instead look at the bigger picture of what I am accomplishing in a week, month, and year. I still allow myself time to relax, but I am making small changes to my daily life, like not binge watching shows every night.

As I start my 28th year, I decided to use my reflection on this past year to guide goals, both big and small. Some I will try and incorporate daily or weekly and other might only happen once. I think there is beauty in this balance. And I am sharing these 28 goals here because writing them down makes me more accountable, right?

1. Daily meditation/mindfulness practices
2. Attend an immersive yoga & meditation retreat
3. Learn more about yoga postures and breathing techniques
4. Bi-weekly to monthly blogging on anything
5. Digitally documenting and sharing my travel adventures
6. Sending more postcards and letters
7. Reading diverse books — at least one book per month
8. Start morning with NPR Up First and The Daily NYT podcasts
9. No more eating/drinking on the go — enjoying and savoring the moments
10. Make cold brew coffee at home and experiment with variations
11. Make kombucha at home and experiment with variations
12. Try local cuisines — learning about them and their histories
13. Reduce my environmental impact in small ways
14. Shop for local for food at wet markets in Singapore
15. Bring reusable containers for food/drink
16. Learn to quickly sketch in perspective
17. Learn about cartography and practice my own map making
18. Learn more about photography techniques
19. Develop design guidance consulting website
20. Work to secure at least one new client or project
21. Test and build upon Prototyping Canvas tool
22. Create the Prototyping Playbook V1
23. Start working on a business non-fiction book around prototyping
24. Hike portion of the Great Wall of China
25. Hike some of the tallest mountains in SE Asia including via ferrata to Mount Kinabalu (tallest in SE Asia)
26. Ski crazy deep powder in Japan
27. See Komondo Dragons on Komondo National Park Island, Indonesia
28. Share experiences in SE Asia with family and friends who visit — this is an open invitation, so come visit me! :D

Each year feels like it flies by quicker than the last. This is what happens when you grow up, right? Except that I don’t want to grow up. At least not in all senses. I want to keep embracing the child-like qualities that I love the most. Wonder. Curiosity. Awe. Playfulness. Persistence. Moving into this next year, I am striving for a life where every day is an adventure regardless of how big or small it is, and one where I play just as hard as I work.

Anyone who knows me would say this year is very “typical Carl”. Always on the go, never stopping. I’ve embraced this title and way of life and no doubt I’ll never truly stop going. But this year, I want to slow down in some ways. I’m learning to embrace the slow daily moments as much as the big ones.

The power of reflection is real. You gain insights about your life that you may have not even realized. If you feel inclined, take an hour to think about the last week, month, or year. What brought you joy? Sadness? Other emotions? How can you learn from these instances and make changes in your daily life?

When I came across this quote, it dawned on me — each and every one of our lives are complex, messy problems ready to be solved. Why not use design thinking principles to help us figure out our passions and our careers? I’d rather rapidly prototype, test, and iterate outcomes for my life now instead of wishing I had tried to be a yoga instructor, book author, or toy designer in fifty years.

If design thinking can transform organizations and inspire innovation, then surely it can help us mere humans create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling. And this philosophy and approach is for everyone — regardless of age, occupation, or current situation — design thinking can help you to uncover what you should try next. And the best part is that if you fail or absolutely hate the experience, then you failed now and failed forward — you have one less option to worry about and you’ve moved towards uncovering what will make you happy long-term.

I am at a unique cross-road in my life right now, which has forced me to come back to this “designing your life” mindset. I am about to graduate with my PhD in Design Theory and Methodology, and I have to decide what to do next…academic? design consultant? circus performer? barista? So many of us have moments like this, whether we are about to graduate or are just unhappy or unmotivated in our current careers. If you are thinking to yourself right now, “I wonder what it would be like to be an artist” or “My childhood dream was to be a musician” or “I hate my job but I’m afraid I wasted my college degree”, then I challenge you to join me in this journey of applying design thinking to our lives in the pursuit of creating a joyful and well-lived life.*

Design thinking is an innovation management philosophy that has five core tenants to solving complex problem: 1) empathize, 2) define, 3) ideate, 4) prototype, and 5) test.

1. Empathy: The first step to designing your life is by taking a critical look at yourself. You need to understand where you are right now — professionally, mentally, physically, relationship-wise — to then see where you’re going next. You need to ask yourself some hard questions, like when was the last time you felt truly happy? What makes you smile and laugh? What do you wish you’d never have to do again? You need to dig deep into yourself and assess your experiences, jobs, relationships, and extracurricular activities up until this point. Beware of dysfunctional thinking — do not get stuck in the idiosyncrasies of age old career advice like “what is your passion?”. Often you can’t be passionate about something until you’ve had a lifetime of experience!
2. Define: The second stage is about defining what it is that you desire as an outcome of your life. It is only through critically understanding yourself — what you do, who you are, and what you believe — that you can begin to connect the dots and see a path for where you’re going. It is often helpful to make a list of things you desire to be a part of your life; think of these as the ingredients for success. Part of this stage is re-framing, one of my favorite tools as a designer. You flip conventional thinking and assumptions on their head based on the empathy work you’ve done. And don’t get stuck trying to solve “gravity problems” — the things you cannot change! Instead of blaming gravity for making it hard to bike up a hill, maybe re-frame this challenge as how to make a lighter bicycle or maybe forget bikes altogether and think about other modes of transportation like a personal jet-packs (totally possible in our lifetime).
3. Ideate: Here comes the fun part! You get to imagine different five and ten-year scenarios for your life. Start with three options—from one that may be pretty traditional to your background to one that is something you’d do if money wasn’t a factor and if you didn’t care what other people thought (that’s a whole other issue not for this post). Be careful about having too many choices though, as research has proven that too many options can create choice overload where you result in significantly less happiness due to the “but what if…” or FOMO (fear of missing out) mindsets.
4. Prototype: Now, you get to prototype these future lives. What does a prototype of your life look like? Well, they can be conversations and interviews, shadowing of positions, or short or long term experiences. If you want to be a circus performer, then you better talk to a few performers to learn the ins-and-outs of the job and industry. It might not be as glamorous as you thought, or maybe you’ll learn that there are aspects that are better than you imagined. Conversations are easy and free, so have as many as you can! To take your life prototypes another step further, you could shadow positions or sign up for a short-term course. If you want to be a pastry chef, then you should try a dessert cooking class to see how much you enjoy cooking in real life versus watching the Food Network and drooling at home.
5. Test (and iterate): Remember that each of these prototypes — whether conversations or experiences —need to happen in the real world! You can’t just sit here and think about what those jobs may be like. You need to see first-hand. If you don’t like these experiences, then head back to stage one and start all over again. Design, and life, are not linear processes. It is rare that you’ll find the perfect job after the first interview. Instead, take the time to reflect on your experiences and document what you liked and did not like. This might help to re-frame some goals for your life moving forward.

Life is anything but linear and there is no perfect outcome. There are many versions of the best life for each of us. It is all about perspective and being confident that you’ve tried out the handful of different options that might have been next-best. Design thinking is a helpful tool that anyone can use to evaluate their life and happiness. If you’re not happy, then do something about it. Have curiosity and a bias towards action, and I promise you won’t be disappointed with how your life turns out.

As Bill Burnett says, “It’s simple…get curious, talk to people, and try stuff.”

If you are interested in learning more about designing your life, then I highly recommend reading “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life” by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans and watching this 25-minute TEDxStanford talk.

• I am by no means a life coach, nor do I even have my own life fully put together. I am simply a designer who is trying to use this philosophy to challenge myself to think outside the box and imagine all the possible lives that I could live! I hope you’ll join me in this pursuit.

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