(For young design students)
What initially appealed to me most about biomimicry was the process - particularly the phase of discovery where we get to go out and learn about nature through observation as a naturalist would. As a lifelong nature enthusiast, I have always wanted to find a way to combine my love of science and the natural world with art and design. Biomimicry helped to indulge those two passions, while also forcing me to break away from some of the limiting habits I have developed as a designer.
Two key biomimicry exercises really bridged that gap for me - the "Be, Contemplate, Imagine" or BCI exercises, and the "discovery" phase of the design process. In a BCI, The idea is to go outside to observe whatever nature you can - a nature preserve, a park, or even your own neighborhood - and to sit quietly and absorb your surroundings, taking note of anything unique you notice or that sparks your curiosity. By doing this, you can be sure to notice things you hadn't before, which can provoke your sense of wonder, motivating you to ask why nature has evolved its different patterns and behaviors.
The act of getting outside really helped me to shed some habits I've grown accustomed to in my design process. Often when starting a new project, it can be rare to be afforded the luxury of time to seek inspiration from the outside world and things outside of other visual designs. However, some of the best inspiration you can get will be outside of your own discipline. Good writing is less likely to be the product of mimicking other great writers, and more likely to come from lived experience, and having the open mind that will allow you to be observant and perceptive about your surroundings. The same is true of design. Simply looking within our field for inspiration not only narrows our perspective, but can also lead us to keep recreating the same problems. By getting away from our desks and paying attention to the natural world, we can rediscover our sense of wonder and start to understand nature’s genius - and that can help our work reach new levels of both beauty and functionality.
The "discovery" phase of the design process was also instrumental in getting me to think more deeply about the things I was observing, and to think more critically about nature's strategies for solving different problems. For whatever problem you're trying to solve - how to capture water, how to stay clean, how to protect from the cold - it can be useful to look at extreme environments and situations and consider how this problem is solved when an organism's life depends on it. As humans we can take many of these things for granted. But it's easy to forget that humans also live in similar extremes, even if the more privileged among us are not faced with those extremes as others around the world may be. But think of all of the environmental issues that have made recent news even within the U.S. alone - urban and rural communities that lack access to clean water, drought and wildfires, flooding, food insecurity, the list goes on. Organisms have figured out how to survive in all of these extreme conditions - looking to nature could help to inspire the variety of solutions we urgently need.