Creative product design using biomimetics

Abstract

Biomimetics is based on the use of biological concepts in the development of innovative technologies, products, and processes. Indeed, nature is a vast source of wisdom, with 3.8 billion years of experience in preserving successful biological strategies and discarding failures. A complete understanding of natural constraints, challenges, and corresponding solutions is however required for these strategies to be used to solve human problems, including the development of new products with minimal use of energy and materials. Additionally, the incorporation of Biomimetics into the industrial process has to be conducted as part of a structured process. In partnership with a design company, we built a structured methodology for the application of Biomimetics in the development of packaging solutions for our cosmetics company. We initially identified 12 demands associated with packaging. Of those, containing was identified as a central demand, which prompted us to ask How does Nature contain liquids? A report describing biological solutions to this problem included drawings and pictures of organisms and potential ideas. This approach resulted in 25 new proposals for the development of new packaging strategies and products. Our results show that it is possible to incorporate the science of Biomimetics into the creative process underlying the development of new strategies and products in a cosmetics company, and possibly in other types of companies as well.