Our Books

We have published two books based on the classes we teach at Stanford and the workshops we've taught to hundreds of professionals, folks just like you. These intrepid life designers started by "setting the bar low" and trying small experiments (we call them prototypes) to increase the joy in their lives. Take a look...

At last, a book that shows you how to build—design—the life you want, at any age or stage! Designing Your Life is “… the career book of the next decade.”

David Kelley, Founder of IDEO and Stanford’s d.school

#1 New York Times Best Seller

Designing Your Life

Designers create products and solve problems using design thinking – an innovation process first developed at Stanford University. In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us design a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, or how young or old we are.

Highlights of Designing Your Life include:

Workview and Lifeview: Building your compass

Wayfinding vs. Navigation

There’s more than one life inside you

Designing your Odysseys

How to prototype anything

How to NOT get a job

Choosing Happiness

Failure immunity

The same designer mindsets responsible for products, services and experiences can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, and one that always holds the possibility of surprise.

DESIGNING YOUR LIFE

From the authors of the #1 New York Times best seller

Designing Your Work Life

A timely, urgently needed book about work in our post-pandemic reality. With updated tools, tips, and design ideas that show us how to navigate disruption (global, regional, or personal) and create new possibilities for our post-COVID career and beyond. Based on the proven innovation method called design thinking, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show you how to design the job you’ll love.

Highlights of Designing Your New Work Life include:

Disruption is the New Normal

The Humans in the Room – How Zoom neutralizes status

Get Out of the Waiting Room & Into The Acceptance Zone

Wayfinding: The Critical Disruption Design Skill

Don’t Resign – Redesign

Relentless ReDesign: the Solution to Non-Stop Disruption

In "Designing Your New Work" Life Burnett and Evans show us how design thinking can transform our present job, and how it can improve our experience of work in times of disruption. They giving us the tools to enjoy the present moment and to prototype our many possible futures.

DESIGNING YOUR WORK LIFE