The implementation of biomimetics in the design and development of highly efficient user interfaces
The use of biomimetics in technology may not be a hot topic, but it can revolutionize the way we construct our user interfaces.
There have been several implementations of carefully selected biological characteristics in the design and development of devices and ideas that are inspired by how biology works, in part because biology and life as we know them (on Earth, at least), have been evolving for millions of years, which equates to equally astronomic quantities of trial and error mutations utilizing the evolutionary mechanisms known and well documented by Charles Darwin back in the day in his very famous scientific publication (The Origin of Species), which remains until today the de facto foundation for evolutionary biology.
In this publication my main objective is to introduce you to a framework I have created for the construction of more efficient and organic user interfaces. User interfaces that aim to lower the rejection rate and — by the contrary — increase the success rate for the adoption and implantation in the end user’s mind as a desirable to reproduce process and experience.
By doing so we can interact with our computers in a seamless manner by “connecting” both entities (organic and synthetic) through a user interface that resembles the communication traits we consider successful in our human societies. I will guide you through the thinking process and reasoning behind this framework.
Despite of it being inspired and adapted for Web user interfaces (which has been my area of expertise for the last ~10 years), the core principles can be applied to any interface, disregarding its nature.
That means that the framework on its own is implementation-agnostic, allowing you to change the parameters to meet the desired outcomes of your very own framework (you can extend this as you wish). You can visualize my framework as a pattern, an abstract layer that can answer the most fundamental questions in order to infuse our user interfaces with empathy and simplicity, communicative intelligence (up to a certain degree or the resemblance of it), which in exchange is going to ease the interaction process between humans and computers (human-computer interaction).
What is biomimetics?
Before we start, I consider that it is important to level up our glossary so that we gain homogeneity in knowledge and normalize the language we will use in this article. Because I suspect this will be of use not only to Web developers, engineers, architects, API designers, Web visual designers, user experience designers and developers, but also for product owners, product managers and to any individual or corporation:
Biomimetics: (also known as biomimicry): is defined in the Oxford dictionary as “the design and production of materials, structures, and systems that are modeled on biological entities and processes”
End user: is defined in the Oxford dictionary as “a person who actually uses a product rather than one who makes or sells it, especially a person who uses a product connected with computers”.
- i.e.: That is, you, as an Instagram user, are an end user of it, because you are not the one who created it, you are consuming it.
User interface: (also known as UI, as an acronym): is defined in the Oxford dictionary as “the way a computer gives information to a user or receives instructions from a user”.
- i.e.: The button you click in order to like a publication on Instagram are part of a user interface that enables you to interact with a computer without having to write any code nor commands.
User interfaces (the traditional definition)
User interfaces, as we know them today, are a collection of visual and auditory mechanisms (graphics, buttons, input elements for voice, text and other gestures) that enable the end user to input data through events (commands, orders) so that they can interact with a computer without having to write computer code.
The user interface as a concept is perhaps one of the greatest inventions of the 21st century; in part because it enabled the end users with no technical background to interact with computers that otherwise will be out of their reach and domain.
But we have several flaws. For instance, after many years of working in collaboration with teams in the design and development of user interfaces, and due in part to my affinity with biology, I have identified improvements we can make to this model in order to make the most out of that interaction (the bridge between humans and computers) so that we produce a smoother transition from one entity to another, easing that interaction process (the handling of inputs and outputs) by turning our user interfaces into more organic versions of themselves.
There were some questions:
- How can we achieve such adaptability of the user interface so that it becomes more organic (with a tendency to the conscious entity, the human)?
- And why would we want that to happen in the first place?
- What is (or are) the outcome that we expect out of that?
- What specific mechanisms and sections of the user interface should we adapt?
And fortunately I got an answer to all these questions in biology, through biomimetics.
Biomimetics of the human being in user interfaces
After carefully thinking about this, and because we belong to the human species (of course), it does make sense that we aim (or at least attempt) to replicate human biology in our user interfaces. But why? You may be wondering right now. Because we literally find it easier to talk and interact with the communication capacities of a chimp that those presented by a butterfly. Now you understand what I mean.
Now, understanding these findings, what parts of human biology should try to replicate into our user interfaces? The amplitude of our human biology is certainly large, so I had to first of all think of an area of that biology that would be abstract enough as to allow me to replicate the characteristics (at some extend) and bring them to the user interface, and that area of our biology turned out to be the communicative abilities we have.
Humans, as well as other mammals, have a very rich set of communicative capabilities. For instance, we use non-verbal communication quite extensively so that we transfer messages in a complementary manner with the verbal communication style. We also present a wide range of micro expressions that add to that richness in our communication set of capabilities. This communication process and its enrichment has allowed us not only to evolve as all living creatures do, but to take control of that evolutionary process and make it our own. So that the communication layer in our human biology seemed to be the most optimal one to be adapted through biomimetics and implemented in our user interfaces.
Now that we have the clarity on what we would like to emulate, it’s time to split this up into more manageable chunks.
Human optimal communicative traits or indexes of success
Once we understand that the communication layer in our human biology is the subject of study of this article, and that this is also this piece or section that we must adequate to our user interfaces, the next step in the biomimetic process is to then understand which specific traits or indexes contribute to what we call a successful communication process among humans.
This section of the framework is based mostly on scientific research on human communication that I will cite in the upcoming days or weeks after the first publication of this framework, so that I can gain scientific support for it, so for now the traits of success in human communication are selected based on what I have observed, researched, and read about (you can replace these traits with others you consider more important for your implementation of the framework).
I have subdivided them into five categories. Because we as a species have a very complex and large set of communication characteristics that can make the communication process successful among humans, I found myself with many options on the table, so I decided to lower these options to only five so that the framework remains manageable and easy to understand. The five categories are the following listed below:
Human communication trait category
By obtaining this set of human communication traits we gain dimensionality. This framework can be used in order to assess our user interfaces’ “humanity” index. By doing so, we can analyze our user interface from an objective standpoint (more objectiveness is required in order to adhere to the scientific method). For instance, we do have very good interactions with certain species: big mammals (usually at the top of our rank), and some birds (very intelligent).
Jane Goodall interactions with big apes are a very good starting point due to the significant amounts of videos and documentation currently available. Members of the great apes (this includes us) are great for our experiments in part because of our genetic ancestry and similarity. Let’s analyze the interactions (your evaluations may be different):
Gorilla’s communication trait category
Even though the values I assigned to the communication traits can be subjective, I would like to invite you to do the same exercise. The probability of your impressions of being above or below 4,4 are low, because our perception of the communicative process with members of the big apes family is fairly similar due in part because we both belong to the human species.
Now let’s do the same exercise but time as if we were interacting with humans.
Because both animals can be considered interfaces (or a collection of interfaces), we can compare the two. We obviously perceive the interaction with other humans easier for obvious reasons. The same logic applies to our graphical user interfaces. Imagine if instead of making our user interface human-like, we make it more gorilla-like; we would lose gain in all dimensions. Thus the reason why aiming to make our user interfaces more human-like is important and at the core of this publication. By doing so we gain speed, compatibility and retention.
Through the implementation of each of the traits and their correlation (or translation) into their respective technological definition, we can leverage the quality of the interaction between human end-user and the computers with which they interact o a daily basis. The more human your user interface, the better it is for the end users to complete complex tasks in an application.
More information, studies, scientific evidence, are to be provided.
