The book "The Non-Human Persona Guide: How to create and use personas for nature and invisible humans to respect their needs during design (Life-centred Design Guides)" by Damien Lutz encourages us to broaden our viewpoint and consider new perspectives when tackling an innovation project.
Lutz is a designer and researcher in Sydney and has been conducting his own research for years to put into practice what is called "Life Centred design" in English to overcome and complement the "human centred" approach we are used to when we talk about methodologies such as Design Thinking.
Damien Lutz tells us that in the process of studying the context of action and defining the needs and requirements of the stakeholders influenced by the project, it is important to consider the point of view of human beings, obviously consumers, by investigating their needs, but that it is equally important to consider the point of view of living beings other than humans and inanimate objects present in the context where we wish to bring an innovation, such as plants, fungi, soil.
The book highlights the importance of building so-called non-human personas, profiles that incorporate the needs and characteristics of plants and animals, and how important it is to consider so-called nonuser personas, which are individuals who are not considered direct users but people who are part of the value chain, or who can be influenced by it.
Often when we think about the stakeholder map we focus on the people who most directly interact with a product or who will be affected by a potential change we would like to make.
In reading this book we understand that it is necessary to analyze the needs of even the most external people, producers, and influenced communities, as well as consider the healthiness of the soil of the flora and fauna that are affected by the entire product life cycle, from production to the use or function of the product or service we would like to innovate.
The book offers a 10-step guide to innovate physical products and digital products by taking a Life-Centered approach and implement personas tools for non-users and non-humans.
The book also presents interesting online resources, the materials are open source, and experimentation and sharing of these tools is encouraged in the book to address innovation, design and communication projects in a more comprehensive and inclusive way.
In 2022, Upskill 4.0 followed a project concerning the market for meat substitutes, an increasingly topical issue that is being talked about a lot these days thanks to the Netflix series "You are what you eat: twins compared" in which a study is conducted on pairs of twins to investigate the effects of a balanced, vegan diet compared with a balanced, omnivorous diet. Along the course of the episodes, the meat industry is also analyzed, and here we see an example of the Life Centred approach, its effects on consumers are explained.
In Upskill 4.0 we understood this with the Italian case of Food Evolution, followed within the Upskill Perugia initiative., and it is emphasized in the TV series that cites the case of Impossible Foods, today in bringing innovation in some sectors it is essential to consider and communicate the point of view and benefits of different actors in the ecosystem, trying to enrich the Human Centred point of view with a Life Centred perspective.