Exploring Biomimicry in the Students’ Design Process

Abstract

Since the very early days of history, human beings
‘designed’ things by looking at nature. In our days, the use
of nature in design has become more systematic and
detailed. Although as old as humanity itself, use of nature
especially in the field of design still offers novelty and
often brings success in solving problems in a sustainable
way.
When it comes to industrial design education specifically, it
seems to be a promising method to mimic the nature in
designing new products; however different dynamics
effect and sometimes prevent students to use natural
analogy in their projects. It is observed that industrial
design students aren’t eager to use biomimicry which is a
type of natural analogy in their design projects although
they learn about it in different courses as a creativity
method.
The study therefore aimed to find out about two issues
related to the matter: a) trying to find out and understand
the reasons behind this reluctance against the use of
nature, b) if they were presented a methodology, in what
ways this reluctance would be overcome and they would
go beyond taking nature as not only a formal source of
inspiration.