Nature-Inspired Design Thinking
A workshop put together by Hampi Centre for Design (Hampi Center For Design) & EcoEdu (EcoEdu — Quality Environment Education
Observing and absorbing phenomenal patterns in nature is one of the most efficient techniques to arrive at an organic design solution. Ecology is the most complex of systems from micro to macro, and ensures complete sustenance of all elements involved in an entire chain. Limited resources on the planet which are used to suffice an incredible population naturally create a multitude of problems and loopholes across interconnected systems. Yet, through the timeline of evolution, it is pretty evident that nature has tackled those things more efficiently in the most mysterious of ways.
In the series of introductory sessions that were conducted regarding biomimicry and ecology, I didn’t have much knowledge about the process involved in problem-solving when it came to taking inspiration from the natural world. This was just an insight into how biomimicry works and the problems that we worked on weren’t very systematic and detailed like design thinking methodologies that I had done previously. Hence we worked purely on the ideation process based on the Biomimicry Taxonomy (by Innovation Inspired by Nature — AskNature) which helped us categorize interrelated physical, chemical, and biological problems and solutions. The Biomimicry Taxonomy is a classification system developed by the Biomimicry Institute to organize information. The taxonomy categorizes the different ways that organisms and natural systems meet functional challenges into groups of related functions as a tool to support “thinking functionally” and identifying questions to “ask” nature when beginning a design challenge. — Biomimicry Taxonomy — Resource — AskNature
To start with, we generated as many problems as we could related to the environment which was followed by chunking them into groups (Affinity mapping). We divided ourselves into a group of two each, to carry forward the category we had chosen to solve. I and my teammate went ahead with the problem statement — how can consumption of petrol/diesel be reduced by 50% during an in-between stage of a shift from fossil fuels to fully battery-operated vehicles? We chose this problem based on the premise that in the coming future, a complete shift in 100% battery-operated vehicles will occur due to a lack of resources and since any shift takes time to completely come to practice, the current fuel engine would structurally be manipulated to fill in that gap (this was an extension of solving the problem of pollution by reducing fuel consumption).
The modified version of the engine wasn’t the final concept since we weren’t able to dig more deeply into materials/chemical compositions due to a shortage of time. Hence the diagram is explained as it was done earlier without any further changes. By retaining the basic engine model as it was, we tried to add elements that we thought would function better according to our understanding and research.
From the taxonomy, we focused purely on the structural facet of the problem. Hence we tried to alter a basic combustion engine by using Xylem & Phloem’s capillary action. Capillary action is the spontaneous flow of a liquid into a narrow tube or porous material. This movement works against the force of gravity. It uses cohesive forces of liquid and adhesive forces between the liquid and tube material. So for this process to occur, the tube needs to be very small in diameter. If the liquid molecules are strongly attracted to the tube molecules, the liquid creeps up the inside of the tube until the weight of the liquid and the adhesive forces are in balance. The smaller the diameter of the tube is, the higher the liquid climbs. This can occur only if the molecules of the tube are attracted to the liquid’s molecules.
Multiple thin cylindrical tubes attached to a circular ring would act like the Phloem by drawing the fuel upwards after which the regular process of heat transferring energy, combustion of gases, and rotational movement would occur. For the ball socket rotational fixture, we thought of adding an expandable and porous material on the interior walls for the process of Phloem to occur. In a tree, the phloem stores water until the tree is in a requirement, and then it travels back to the xylem via cells. The porous material in this case would similarly absorb petrol and send it back to the fuel tank. But the challenge was that we had to design a brand-new engine from scratch for the second phase to work. Another issue was not finding the right material molecules that would attract petroleum molecules for the capillary process to occur more effectively. Hence due to constraints in time, material, and functionality, the process was left half-finished yet, we did get an outline of the fundamentals of nature-inspired design thinking.
Even though this wasn’t an intricate process, it still gave me an insight into different parameters one must study and refer to while thinking of nature-based problem/solution scenarios. Biomimicry is a discipline that interests me even though I lack knowledge in material understanding. But it is a principle needed quite evidently moving forward by keeping in mind the environment’s sensitivity.
Well, this article didn’t have a lot in it but, the next article will be talking about how I used my takeaways to move a step further by creating a product in the form of a small service.
If you enjoyed reading my write-up and found it interesting, follow me on Medium! Feel free to give feedback or comment. You can reach out to me via mail ( shreyarawi@gmail.com)
