Life Design
Life Design serves as a foundational philosophy that underpins the support and services our Careers & Experience department provides to students.
Life Design harnesses design thinking methods to tackle key questions and major decisions surrounding key facets of a person's life including education, career, and overall life’s ambitions and purpose.
Life Design was originally introduced by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans at Stanford University's d.school (Design School) in Stanford, California, U.S.A. It became widespread with the publication of their book, Designing Your Life in 2016.
You can use design thinking to create a life that is meaningful, joyful, and fulfilling. It doesn't matter who you are or were – you can use the same thinking that created the most amazing technology, products, and spaces to design your career and your life.
- Bill Burnett & Dave Evans, Designing Your Life
Design Your Western Digital Career Workbook
Over the last year, we worked with a trio of your fellow Mustangs (Jenna Dart, Hayden Brennen, and Emmanuel Akanbi) to create an engaging, easy-to-use life design resource, customized for students here at Western.
The Design Your Western Digital Career Workbook presents the key principles and concepts of life design in a helpful (and humorous) manner and allows you to learn about many different tools, activities, and methods by which you can design your life to better fit the kind of future and life that you WANT to live.
*NOTE: We would like to express our tremendous appreciation to Stephanie Hayne Beatty (Director – Leadership & Learning), Nicole Campbell (Director – Interdisciplinary Medical Sciences), and the Parr Centre for Thriving at Western for their vision, leadership & support in creating the Design Your Western Digital Career Workbook. We'd also like to thank Kaylee DeRooy, the graphic designer who did an incredible job of bringing Jenna, Hayden & Emmanuel's creation to life! Radical collaboration is a key concept in life design and the workbook couldn't have been developed without many talented people coming together to bring it to life!
Life Design Seminar Series
Harness the power of Life Design to develop a plan for your life (and career) that will result in more ideas, more creativity, less anxiety about the future, and more confidence in your ability to build the life you WANT and the career you CHOOSE.
Developed utilizing Bill Burnett & Dave Evans' Life Design framework, and using key principles from design thinking, the Design Your Life Seminar Series will help you think differently about your future and give you the tools to address the "wicked" challenges of life. Regardless of your program or area of study, you will find value in the time spent imagining and planning the next steps in your Western journey (and beyond). You will leave this in-depth and interactive seminar series with concrete and exciting ideas you can implement right away.
