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in nature is just waiting to be explored.<br />
The natural world and the science that has done so much to illuminate its workings<br />
are fantastic sources of inspiration for product design. The field of biomimicry is all about<br />
that. An engineer in Japan used the shape of the kingfisher bird’s beak as the model for a<br />
new design for the front of high-speed trains that allowed the trains to travel 10 percent<br />
faster while using 15 percent less electricity. Some software designers drew on lessons<br />
about how the internal structure of tree trunks is optimized for strength to design car<br />
bodies that are both more crash-proof and 30 percent lighter. 3 Conservationist and science<br />
writer Janine Benyus has a great TED talk about biomimicry titled “Biomimicry in<br />
Action” in which she discusses a number of other such examples.<br />
(Courtesy of NASA)<br />
Math, biology, astronomy, and even human sciences like sociology and psychology<br />
explore beautiful parts of our world, and all of them are great sources of inspiration for<br />
UX. The psychologist Robert Cialdini, author of the book Influence: The Psychology of<br />
Persuasion, has conducted fascinating research into the most effective ways to write<br />
messages with which we would like to stimulate some behavior, such as conserving<br />
electricity. In one experiment he found that if a sign on the bathroom counter in a hotel<br />
room said that the majority of the other guests who had stayed in that room had reused<br />
their bath towel at least once during their stay, significantly more guests would also reuse<br />
their towels during a stay, while a sign that asked guests to help the hotel conserve water<br />
by reusing their towels had significantly less effect. Imagine how valuable his findings are<br />
for writing good copy in software products.<br />
I told the story of the Dallas airport redesign earlier. Well, airports are a fascinating<br />
source of ideas because they have to direct people where to go, and those people are often<br />
in a real hurry. Also, international airports in particular have to guide people who speak a<br />
wide range of languages and may not recognize the language of the country the airport is<br />
in. Anyone who has flown much knows that some airports do this much better than others.<br />
I was in the Dubai airport at the time of finishing this book and marveled at the big touch
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