Page - 116 - in Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies - Conference Proceedings of the 17th STS Conference Graz 2018

STREAM: Sustainable and Innovative Public Procurement and EcoDesign Biophilic product design: A bio-inspired approach to user preferences. BOĞA, Miray, TURAN, Gülname Dept. of Industrial Product Design, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey Abstract The vicious cycle that we have caused to by our consumption patterns and the artificial world breaks the cycle of nature. This distortive cycle can be summarized as the developments in science and technology – new consumption patterns – ecological issues – new technologies to solve the environmental problems – newer consumption patterns – more ecological issues, and so on. We cannot and shouldn't ignore the place of the artificial surroundings and artifacts in our lives. This proposal suggests searching the ways of affecting the consumption patterns by bio- approaches which target more sustainable solutions. Bio-inspired approaches are rising in the fields of design and engineering. Nature can inspire us in the way we produce and recycle, the material which we use, the form that we give but the most critical part of it may be missing: the user behavior. The products have their life cycle in this artificial world, and the usage phase can be the longest part of some products. A product which was produced through the sustainability concerns may not be sustained because of using it in an unsustainable way. That would be a two-sided issue to be solved. One is raising awareness among the people; the other one is the guidance of products to be used more sensibly. The latter is the focal point of this study. Janine Benyus who is the first biomimic that comes to mind might have implied that kind of approach when she talks about ‘mimicking the nature holistically' (Benyus, 1997/2002). This proposal focuses on the concept of biophilia as a bio-inspired approach to the user preferences. Edward O. Wilson defines biophilia as "the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes" (Wilson, 1984). Based on the savanna hypothesis, biophilia is issued in architectural and urban design as an evolutionary tendency which can affect the people to prefer biophilic places. (Heerwagen, 2011). The Biophilic design may be employed to lead the user behaviors for being adapted to the natural cycle. What is asserted here is to search biophilic features that direct the users subliminally by appealing to their evolutionary and natural tendencies through the affordance and the signifiers of the products. The biophilic design is suggested as a bio-inspired solution for the missing link of the sustainable cycle of the products. Stephen Kellert created the chart of 'Elements and Attributes of Biophilic Design' for architectural and urban design (Kellert, 2008). In this study, a set of interviews was held with industrial designers through a product pool to frame this chart into the product design. To propound the biophilic features of products is very significant to understand if they are impressive on the user motivations. Those features can be used to trigger the sustainable 116