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Biomimicry in UX
Where design meets nature
Biomimicry is a fascinating topic in design. The Biomimicry Institute defines it like this:
“Biomimicry is an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies.”
From architecture to medicine, communication to energy, designers have had incredible success taking inspiration from the natural world and applying them to design solutions for human good and technological advancement.
In this video from Vox on Japan’s Shinkansen Bullet Train, we see how the kingfisher’s beak led to a faster, more aerodynamic and energy efficient high speed train. Just one example from the wonderful world of biomimicry.
UX & biomimicry
This made me ask, how can user experience and interaction designers incorporate biomimicry into their work? To my knowledge, it isn’t a topic that gets much—if any—consideration in digital design.
Which makes me ask, does it apply to us?
At first glance, to be honest, I didn’t know. I didn’t see where it fit in.
We design for consistency and order. We align text and objects to a grid. Our websites and apps scroll up and down or side to side.
We want to be predictable. We want to be understandable. We want to be usable, useful, and organized.
The natural world is orderly and full of patterns, but our human perception of the world is that it’s random, confusing, and uncontrollable. Not adjectives we’d want anyone using to describe our work.
Much of what we do then, is against how the natural world works. The randomness of how a stream meanders. The awesome feeling of insignificance when standing on the top of a mountain. The shapes formed over time, and the adaptations of species to survive in harsh conditions.
