There's a phrase that keeps surfacing in design circles lately: "life-centered design." It's not a rejection of human-centered thinking so much as a reframing of it, one that asks designers to zoom out and consider themselves as participants in living systems rather than engineers working on top of them.

Inter-twined is a new California-based design collaborative and they are taking that idea seriously. Today, on Earth Day, they're inviting the broader design community to explore it with them.

Starting April 22 and running through May 12, Inter-twined is hosting a free, public 21-Day Life-Centered Design Thinking Challenge: a daily journaling and sketching practice designed to help designers, students, and creative thinkers begin building a relationship between their work and the natural world. No registration required. No cost. Just a prompt each morning, a sketchbook, and some honest reflection.

The Studio Behind It

Inter-twined was founded by Agota Jonas and Treasure Hinds, two product designers and educators with decades of experience and a shared history that traces back to their time as colleagues at frog design in the Bay Area, more than 20 years ago. They reconnected recently, and as Hinds began learning about Jonas's biomimicry studies, the conversations started feeling urgent enough to turn into something.

Their focus is on translating biomimicry's Life's Principles, a set of design strategies distilled from natural processes, into practical methods that working designers can actually use. Workshops are in development. Tools are being built. The challenge is their first major public offering, and it's free by design.

"We want products that are beautiful, functional, and deeply human-centered," says Hinds. "But we also need to be participants in living systems rather than extractors from them. This is the design challenge of our lifetime. Nature has been solving these challenges for 3.8 billion years, and it's time we learn from her expertise."

How It Works

Each morning of the challenge, Inter-twined will share a short prompt inspired by life-centered design principles. Participants are encouraged to brainstorm, reflect, and sketch in response. The prompts are intentionally light-touch, meant to build a daily habit of noticing and questioning rather than demanding hours of output.

The 21 days of prompts are followed by a Reflection Day on May 13, where participants are simply asked to consider what they've taken in, what practices they want to carry forward, and, optionally, to share their reflections publicly using the hashtag #LCDChallenge.

Sharing is entirely optional throughout. Each prompt ends with an invitation to post observations and design questions with #LCDChallenge, but the practice is meant to work as a personal exercise first.

Where to Follow Along

You can participate by following Inter-twined on LinkedIn, visiting their website at inter-twined.com, or signing up to receive the daily prompts via email through a form on their site. Instagram is also in the mix for anyone who wants to share visual work.

If the premise resonates with you, today is a great day to start sketching!

Follow Inter-twined on LinkedIn or visit inter-twined.com to participate. #EarthDay #LifeCenteredDesign #DesignThinking #Biomimicry