Biomimicry – Innovation inspired by nature.
Not for nothing people turn to nature for inspiration when approaching problems in a design project, but we mainly think of physical products when the term biomimicry and design are mentioned in the same sentence.
We think of examples like the velcro fastener, DaVinci’s flying apparatus or Japan’s Shinkansen Bullet Train which was drastically improved after shaping it’s nose like the beak of a kingfisher – thus the train was finally able to enter and leave a tunnel without breaking the sound barrier.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/36/60/2e/36602e604a97698831cb9686a24b63c5.jpg
So what about biomimicry in digital areas? It’s much harder to think of examples.
Like Craig Philipps said about biomimicry in UX design:
„Biomimicry in design imitates the natural world when the design solution is physical. The shape of a train, structure of a building, or the material of a wetsuit. All physical objects that can be inspired by naturally occurring phenomena. Digital design is different. Users do not touch our products with their hands. Our products don’t interact with the elements, and are not bound by the physical world. The interaction takes place somewhere else. And that place is the human mind.“ – Craig Philipps
So if we get out of the digital space and look deeper into the field of interactive communication design solutions that connect the digital space and the physical world, we find many interesting examples that – at least sort of – mimic naturally occurring phenomenons.
Chameleon Campaign for smart tailor made.
Take for example the smart tailor made campaign. Even though this campaign doesn’t lower any risks or help society in any way it’s still quite impressive and a good demonstration of what technology is capable of nowadays – also in terms of mimicking nature.
With this great campaign smart triggered a lot of attention in Madrid. It was called the Chameleon campaign in which they advertised their new service of customisation – the customers could exactly determine what colours their car should have.
So they put a smart car into the window of a car dealership and captured the colours of passing peoples clothes and directly transferred them on the exhibited car. So they imitated the ability of a chameleon to adapt to its surroundings.
https://www.dandad.org/awards/professional/2018/experiential/26528/chameleon/
Smart had another very interesting campaign in Lisbon. In this case the biomimicry aspect is not as obvious as in the campaign above, but the interactional aspect and its impact are as well simple as amazing.
Lowering risk through distraction
The idea is quite simple. When pedestrians are standing at a red traffic light their only thought is „when will it switch to green.“, so they get impatient and think about going, even though it’s red. This demonstrates a risky situation that might cause an accident. To lower that risk and give people something to shorten their waiting time the car brand Smart in cooperation with the advertising agency BBDO Germany found an entertaining approach to keep pedestrians in Lisbon waiting until the light switches to green and there’s no risk crossing the street.
„Nobody likes to wait,“ said smart in the video. „That makes traffic lights the most dangerous spots for pedestrians in the city. But what if we made waiting more entertaining?“
https://www.dezeen.com/2014/09/17/interactive-dancing-traffic-lights-installation-smart-car-lisbon/
The interactive installation works like this: they put up boxes in which they invited people to dance. The peoples dance moves were then tracked via motion capturing and translated into the movements of the red traffic light stick figure. The dancing stick figure immediately caught the waiting pedestrians attention, which led to a decrease of 81% of pedestrians crossing the street while a red light phase.
Sources:
https://www.dezeen.com/2014/09/17/interactive-dancing-traffic-lights-installation-smart-car-lisbon/
https://medium.com/@craig5446/biomimicry-in-ux-design-249cc6d8649
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/36/60/2e/36602e604a97698831cb9686a24b63c5.jpg
https://www.dandad.org/awards/professional/2018/experiential/26528/chameleon/
