Guiding students to become designers and co-designers of inner sustainability – a potential framework for higher education

The corona pandemic was humanity’s wake-up call. The slowdown called for existential thoughtfulness about life and a need for reframing industrial values related to the acceleration and growth logic of the capitalist economy. The pandemic and the blank space it included opens to radical changes to meet the human- and planetary health challenges. This paper suggests a life design framework, which includes a life design attitude and a 4-foci model aiming at inner and outer sustainability. The 4-foci model entails an inner focus, and other focus, an outer praxis/business focus, and an outer planetary/world focus. The overall intention is to guide students to become better sustainable designers in their own lives, better sustainable co-designers in other people's lives and in the world. This paper presents extracts from two cases with students and job-seeking academics and demonstrate how to train the inner and other focus and how co-designing is taking a central place.