Download - notecards DESIGNSelf-actualization Self-transcendence Freeing Flying How it works The key to Whole Human Design is the Periodic Table of Human Elements™. It is the framework that

WHOLEHUMANDESIGN™designing for humans, not users

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How it works The key to Whole Human Design is the Periodic Table of Human Elements™. It is the framework that will help you analyze the Hx behind your Ux. (It’s based on Maslow’s theory, Existentialism, Phenomenology and our two-year study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)

The Periodic Table is made up of 18 Human Elements.

These are elements of human experience that lead to a happier

and more fulfilling life.

For more detail, download the workbook from our website!

Each column is based on a level of Maslow’s Hierarchy

of Needs (1971).

There are two types

of elements

Once we have achieved a Freedom to Be, these elements add to a richer, more vibrant experience.

These elements untrap us from whatever is holding us back from living in a fulfilling way.


No matter where we go, we carry our full selves with us. When we become a “user,” we don’t set aside our hopes, fears, past or future. So why do we design as if we do?

This methodology will help you intentionally design the human experience (Hx) that lies beneath every user experience (Ux).

learn more about us and Whole Human Design at humanelement.design

Hello! Wondering who is behind this? We’re Human Element, a bolt-on R&D Lab that was founded at MIT. We work hand-in-hand with partners to launch their next generation of products, services or experiences. Whole Human Design is the methodology we use on every project to make sure our products solve human problems and make the world a better place.

Whole Human Design™

Human Element

#wholehumandesign


There are four steps to designing for the Whole Human...

1. Go through the FREEING cards (1-11) Does this element seem especially relevant to your users or design context? If so, put it aside.

2. Go through the FLYING cards(12-18)Does this element seem especially relevant to yoru design context or organization? If so, put it aside.

3. Downselect Out of all the cards you set aside, choose one FREEING card and one FLYING card. Now you have a whole human strategy!

4. IdeationIn addition to brainstorming on ways to fulfill user needs, ideate for your FREEING and FLYING element. Use the design prompts on the card to help.

Step-by-step...


Physical safety

2.

PsOwnership of

organism

1. HEALTH

Ownership of organism

Designing for this element

Do your users need to feel in control of their bodies?

When we lose our physical health, our life is overridden by whatever pain, sickness or injury we’re experiencing. The loss of ownership of our bodies forces us to devote our attention to that ailment and to achieving homeostasis, rather than to ourselves. Very few things can have such a profound effect on our hope and excitement, because, when we lose the ownership of our organism, we no longer feel like helmsmen and women of our own lives; we become hijacked by the ailment.

It’s your job to help people develop a new relationship to their bodies in order to restore their feeling that they are in control of their livesv.

• Help people listen to their bodies and what they are feeling. • Help people make sense of what they’re feeling and recognize patterns. • Help people adjust to new ways of life and restore their ability to enjoy living.

© 2018 Human Element

FREEING FLYING

Physical safetyDo your users need to feel like they are out of harm’s way?


Our physical safety is the foundation of everything in our lives. When we feel like something in the world is putting us in danger, our inner alarm system is tripped--creating an overwhelming sense of fear and shutting down our bodies and minds. Furthermore, we have a hard time moving forward after trauma, because we still feel all-consumed by anxiety and constant fear that we are in harm’s way.

[1] B. A. Van der Kolk, The body keeps the score: mind, brain and body in the transformation of trauma. 2015.

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to do whatever you can to restore people’s sense of routine, comfort and confidence.

• Help people go back to the basics and focus on building strength in eating, sleeping and breathing.[1] • Help people regain a sense of predictability in the world by building a routine.

FREEING FLYING

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Control of outcomes

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CoFinancial freedom

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Control of outcomesDo your users need to feel in control of what happens to them?

Every day we wake up without an ability to see what will happen to us. Sometimes a day can be perfectly mundane and expected; sometimes it can be radically unpredictable. When the world feels rational and manageable, we feel in control of our lives and our safety, but when the world intrudes on that control--by letting something bad happen--it feels chaotic, and we feel violated, threatened and frightened.

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to help people feel equipped to deal with the unpredictable nature of life.

• Help people identify potential outcomes and prepare for multiple pathways rather than a fixed future. • Help people establish tactics and “disaster plans” to give a sense of control if something bad happens.


FREEING FLYING

Financial freedom


Do your users need to feel like they don’t have to compromise their well-being for money?

Financial freedom is the state of “enoughness,” having enough money to not worry about how to pay for the next flat tire, meal or medication. We don’t need to lavish excess to feel safe, but when money forces us to make decisions that put us in harm’s way or affect our well being, we become prisoners to our bank accounts.

It’s your job to help people develop confidence that their lives won’t be affected by a lack of money

• Help people develop a mental model of what is “enough” for them.• Assist people in developing a plan to achieving “enoughness.”


FREEING FLYING

Sanctuary for true self

6.

SaSolidarity

5.

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Solidarity


Do your users need to feel like they are not alone on their journey?

Solidarity is the feeling that you have someone standing with you, arm-in-arm, as you navigate life’s ups and downs. It is a bond where two people take responsibility for each other’s happiness, reinforcing each other’s hope and strength, sharing pain and struggles and keeping each other close to heart. With solidarity, you gain a partner in all interests and a feeling that you won’t be left behind as you go through life.

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to help people feel the presence and involvement of others in their lives.

• Give people the feeling of others being persistently supportive and present in their lives.• Help reinforce the feeling of “no man or woman left behind.”• Give people opportunities to show that they believe in one another • Help people provide support one another and be part of each other’s journey.


FREEING FLYING

Santuary for true self


Do your users need help talking off a mask and existing freely?

As we go through life, we learn how to hide who we truly are--to avoid being judged or hurt by others. The way in which we really want to speak, think, act, joke, look and feel is locked away inside; however, when we feel welcomed with another’s full heart, that inner spirit becomes uncaged, giving us the freedom to be authentic and explore/express new dimensions of our Self. It is infinitely empowering--to live in a way in which our outside matches the inside.

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to help people express themselves freely.

• Help them shattter outer expectations and norms that don’t match the way they want to live.• Help them explore entirely new dimensions of themselves and express a new way of being.• Provide permission to be imperfect, quirky and unconventional.


FREEING FLYING

Feeling known

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KReason to exist

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Rtx

Feeling knownDo your users need to feel like someone gets them?

As we go through life together, we end up holding memory of each other’s growth, triumphs, struggles and history. Whether we realize it or not, the people around us store the nuances of our trajectory inside them, helping us to feel truly known and understood. When someone knows our past, it gives them the full context of our present and allows them to understand the significance behind what happens to us. Through this, we gain a new level of support from others, one in which they can provide true advice, reflection and accountability.

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to help people learn each other’s personal history and context.

• Help people share their story and what has shaped them. • Help people feel comfortable being open with others regarding their past and to tell the real story. • Once that is shared, help people hold each other accountable and support one another, based on their new knowledge of the other.


FREEING FLYING

Reason to exist


Do your users need to feel like the world is better because of them?

We need to feel like, at the very least, there is a little tiny corner of the universe that has been shaped by us. This can be achieved through any channel really--music, art, parenting, gardening...you name it. But at the end of the day, this contirbution is most powerful when we feel like we’re donating a talent or a skill that is uniquely ours, something that not just anyone could have given.

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to help your people find their unique way to give to the world.

• Help people identify their uniquenesses and believe in their value.• Help people channel their uniquenesses into action and output. • Help people develop the inertia, confidence and wherewithal needed to not give up.


FREEING FLYING

Progress

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PLEVEL TIME

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Inner support

10.

Is

Progress


Do your users need to feel to feel like they’re moving forward and not stagnating?

We are happiest when it feels like our plotline is progressing and our lives are headed towards new territory. That’s not to say that small bumps and setbacks aren’t inevitable, but we need to feel ourselves trying, moving, reaching for the next thing. On the contrary, when we feel our story stagnating, we lose excitement, motivation and ultimately a sense of our worth.

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to help people move forward.

• Help people pinpoint the factors that are holding them back and help them let go of those things.• Help people challenge themselves and not give up. • Help people see the progress they’ve made by creating montages and illustrating progress.


FREEING FLYING

Inner support


Do your users need an emboldening inner voice?

Our inner thoughts are like a 24/7 radio station. With every step, you may be listening to nice things about yourself: “you’re capable!” “lovable!” “talented!” Or quite the opposite: “worthless!” “forgettable!” “insufferable!” That inner disposition has tremendous power to change the course of our lives, because it becomes the way we see ourselves and what we are destined to be.

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to help your users feel the presence and involvement of others in their lives.

• Help people become aware of their inner voice and realize when it’s wrong.• Help people learn its tendencies, especially how it tends to minimize and sabotage. • Give people the power to reality check their negative self thoughts.


FREEING FLYING

Relationship with self

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RsSelf-plasticity

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Relationship with self


Can you help users hear themselves?

The social pressures and opinions that surround us can dilute the unique, soulful and vibrant inner world that exists within us. When this happens, the pings sent from within us go unheard or unnoticed and we go through life evading our conscience. A true relationship with self is one in which we tune our senses back to ourselves, allowing our gut to call out to us, helping us to find our Selves in everything and make decisions that feel right in our bodies.

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to help people live in their inner world.

• Help people open the channel and listen to their innermost voice.• Help them, above all, pay attention to what they love. Create values from those things. • Help surface the things they might be hiding from themselves. • Help people reflect on their personal lineage and understand how their past has created the person they are today.


FREEING FLYING

Self-plasticity


Can you help users feel capable of transformation?

Through our lives, we get used to our routines, habits and traits, and over time, we begin to believe that we are locked as A or B. However, in reality, we could very well be C...if our mind let us be. From time to time, we shatter the former version of what we thought of ourselves. This could happen in a big shift (like a change in career) or something seemingly mundane (like picking up a new hobby). Regardless, we are reminded that we have the power evolve; we feel our own malleability and the expansion of self.

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to help people jump into new realms.

• Help people envision open-ended futures that don’t trap them into specific ways of life. • Help people with the hardest part: defying the limitations they set for themselves so they can take the first step outside of what they think they’re capable of. • Create symbols of evolution and commemorate new chapters.


FREEING FLYING

Self-design

14.

Sd

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Self-in- progress

15.

SiP

Self-in-progress


Can you help users exist as a project, not a finished product?

While we idealize the idea of being a finished, polished product, in reality, we will be a work-in-progress until the end. Accepting this allows us to re-prioritize growth and accept our flaws. Furthermore, existing as a work-in-progress changes our dynamic with others, because when we recognize our unfinishedness, we realize our need for their help and we allow them to be unfinished alongside us.

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to take the power away from perfection.

• Help people go against their intuition to hide imperfections. • Help people chronicle the lessons they learned.• Help people free themselves from fixed goals and templates of what success is• Encourage play and a childlike lack of self-consciousness.


FREEING FLYING

Self-design


Can you help users create who they are?

Instead of adhering to whatever tries to hold us to a pre-prescribed manner of existing, we are happiest when we create a unique version for ourselves choosing how to live, appear and behave and what to value. When we are intentional about self design, every decision we make--whether it’s the food we eat, what we wear, how we spend our time adds definition to our self. In making this choice, we become helmsmen and women of our existence and our lives become a canvas through which we can explore who we are.

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to help people create their identities and their unique way of living.

• Enable people to explore themeselves in every aspect of their life: from what they eat to how they spend their time to what they wear. • Help people turn values into tanbile expression.• Help them develop unique personal rituals and mantras to add nuance to who they are.


FREEING FLYING

Nature

16.

NCreativity

17.

C

NatureCan you help users let go of their selves and connect with the natural world?

As described by poet, Mary Oliver...

Once, years ago, I emerged from the woods in the early morning at the end of a walk and it was the most casual of moments as I stepped from under the trees into the mild, pouring-down sunlight I experienced a sudden impact, a seizure of happiness. It was not the drowning sort of happiness, rather the floating sort. I made no struggle toward it; it was given. Time seemed to vanish. Urgency vanished. Any important difference between myself and all other things vanished. I knew that I belonged to the world, and felt comfortably my own containment in the totality...a sudden awareness of the citizenry of all things within one world: leaves, dust, thrushes and finches, men and women. [2]


Designing for this elementIt’s your job to help people go outside and become one with nature.

• Help people set the intention of connecting with nature. • Help people slow their thoughts, clear their minds and be present in the natural world. • Help people relfect on the experience and descibe the ethereal.

[2] Mary Oliver, Loing Life: Essays and Other Writings. 2005.

FREEING FLYING

Creativity


Can you help users let go of their selves and become their medium?

Creativity is an act of discovering. When I am actually sitting at the piano, all there is for me is the music. I am wholly in it, unless I fumble so badly that I perforce become self-conscious. Mostly, no matter how inadequate my playing, the music is all that matters: I am outside time, outside self, in play, in joy. When we can play with the unself-conscious concentration of a child, this is: art: prayer: love. [3]

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to help people invest their full selves in the act of creating.

• Help people adopt new mediums through which they can express themselves. • Help people give themselves fully to the medium by reducing distractions and anything that will get in the way. • Minimize self-consciousness and fear of failure. • Give people the confidence and channel to share.


As described by writer, Madeline L’Engle...

[3] Madeline L’Engle, Glimpses of Grace. 1996.

FREEING FLYING

Love

18.

LTime

11.

TMonday

Love


Can you help users let go of their selves and become another?

Love… is a quest for truth… truth in relation to something quite precise: what kind of world does one see when one experiences it from the point of view of two and not one? What is the world like when it is experienced, developed and lived from the point of view of difference and not identity? That is what I believe love to be...Love isn’t simply about two people meeting and their inward-looking relationship: it is a construction, a life that is being made, no longer from the perspective of One but from the perspective of Two.

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to help people embrace another as self.

• Help people develop an intention and intuition to love, to go through life for love. • Help people truly see others through openness and vulnerability.• Help people open themselves to the influence of another.


[5] Alain Bodiou. In Praise of Love. 2012.

As described by philosopher, Alain Badiou...

FREEING FLYING

Time


Do your users need ownership of their days?

Sometimes the biggest factor preventing us from existing in a self-actualized way is having the time to do so. Our days can be filled with impositions from our jobs, life responsibilities and errands which makes us feel trapped in our own routines. With all of our committments, we need time in our lives that we fully own: moments when we have no one to be but ourselves and nothing to do but exist as we please.

Designing for this elementIt’s your job to help people use their 24 hours in the best way possible.

• Help people develop a healthy relationship with time. • Help people develop pockets of unused time. • Help people figure out the most self-affirming way to use their free time.


FREEING FLYING