Tool details

Learn from Nature

Ask "how might nature solve this problem?"

Tool category:

Ideation

Generate

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When to use

When you have a design challenge you are trying to solve.

Why you should

Learning from biological systems can help inspire new solutions for your product or service that are inherently more circular and holistic.

What you get

A collection of new or developed existing ideas.

Steps to take

Start by writing down your design challenge.

Identify the function that your product or service is trying to solve. Just write down the function, don’t try to solve it quite yet (e.g.: “My product needs to keep food safe in transit” or “My product needs to keep people warm”).

Take one function and brainstorm all the ways that nature might solve this problem. Try to brainstorm as many ideas as you can think of (in the case of keeping food safe, you might say things like, “Peels that biodegrade,” “Keeping fruit in trees until it’s ready to be picked,” or “Shells to protect nuts”).

When you feel like you’ve come up with an exhaustive list, take one example and see if you can use it to create guidelines for your own product or service. (Keeping with the packaging example, you might list things like, “The packaging biodegrades after use” or “The packaging is highly durable,” etc.)