Shape the impactful leader in you.
Design Character is a non-traditional personal growth book — a workbook, really — with fourteen exercises grounded in human-centred design, mindfulness, somatic psychotherapy, and neuroscience. Build your ethical practice. Design yourself, deliberately.
Published by BIS Publishers. Available direct in Australia, and via BIS Publishers and selected booksellers internationally.
Five shifts in how you lead and design.
After engaging with the book, you’ll understand:
- 01Your unique value system — and how it directs your attention and focus.
- 02How to have impactful conversations that move your work and career forward.
- 03How to establish strong boundaries for psychological safety.
- 04How to become aware of, and diminish, your blind spots.
- 05How to develop your personal ethics and enact them in your work.
Five threads, woven.
Each thread carries its own practices, its own way of paying attention, and its own exercises.
Design with conviction and clarity.
The inner clarity you need for resilient, confident, and impactful design leadership \u2014 how you be as a designer.
Build immunity to moral fading.
Understanding your personal values clarifies workplace decisions and motivations, bridging the gap between identity and professional action.
Establish your ethical practice.
Build an ethical knowledge base and create frameworks that guide your design work \u2014 becoming resilient against the forces that undermine values.
Understand wellness in design and leadership.
Learn to introduce wellness into your design and leadership systematically, extending to team and project wellness assessment.
Deliberately design yourself.
The Design Character Framework appears in each chapter as a tool for teams and for personal use \u2014 restoring agency over the dimensions of your character.
Purposeful, enriching, open-hearted.
“When a book is dedicated to those who are ready to embrace the responsibility that comes with designing our future, you instantly know the next few hours within its pages will be purposeful and enriching. This book has an open heart, a beautiful soul and a profound message.”
“So excited to receive my copy of Design Character. This book is for all designers wanting to have more impact with their work and accelerate mastery in their practice.”
“This Human and Design Character by Dr Melis Senova completely changed my life. The evolution of the designer's journey is so critical \u2014 we are in stewardship to others. We need to remove ourselves in service of who we design for.”
Design Character — the 8-week course.
An 8-week live, online course that walks you through the Design Character Framework with Melis, alongside a cohort doing the work with you. Includes the book.
- 12 hours of live online instruction with Dr Melis Senova
- Community membership — book included
- Exclusive curated resources and action experiments
- Affiliated with the RMIT Master of Design Futures program
“Start your journey towards deliberate and impactful design leadership, today.”
Work the book, with a patient friend.
The book companion will walk each exercise with you, hold your reflections, and point you back to the pages that matter — one honest question at a time.