As a result of recent global changes, which have led to a shift in regulations and to the commercialization of sustainability criteria and demands, traditional design brief methods which lead to conformist design are now not properly equipped to deal with the complexities of “the next Industrial Revolution", otherwise known as the IoT (The Internet of Things). As a result of this, the demand for ideal smarter solutions which improve, simplify and optimize human life comfort is greater than ever.
Design thinking is a structured and powerful method which strives to assist designers in coping with the 'design paradox chain' (As I frame it) and mental design fixations for understanding users' future requirements more clearly, via logical structured spaces. The Ideation stage act as a reflective bridge and is a critical funnel which has a huge effect on all design output life cycles; the synergy between the domain's creates new opportunities for coping with the demands of the present times.
Nature has always provided inspiration for the man-made world within the realm of problem solving; its systems operate within restricted sets of conditions, minimizing waste and irreversible damage to the ecosystem. The Biomimetic approach is a part of Nature’s design strategy, emulating nature’s process and strategy either from a holistic, sustainable perspective.
In my doctoral research, I present the WIT a bio-inspired design-thinking tool driven by the TRIZ ideality strategies. Ideal thinking is a framework of constraints that serves as an engine for effective thinking to tackle a future design solution. The approach sees design challenges as a system, and leads to an enhancement of positive functions based on available resources on the one hand, and reducing harmful functions on the other.
The WIT empowers the product designer's cognitive abilities, thinking skills and forms a reflective bridge between the Problem and the Solution space, via a uniquely structured cognitive mechanism, giving the PD coping mechanisms, through to deal with the 'design paradox chain' during the ideation stage. Applying the tool helps to release design fixation, explore extensively in height resolution the problem space and, as a result, accelerates the creation and subsequent expansion of diverse concepts that are broader than the concepts and which arise when the mind is acting in a more limited fashion, as a result of fixed thinking patterns.