My favorite design principle to learn about was the Biomimicry Framework. My favorite part of it was how inspirational the framework was — instead of giving people specific boxes to check, I think it challenges its participants to think outside the box and model their designs and companies after Nature and all it can do. As designers already find inspiration in nature, I feel that this framework can challenge people to look at nature to find sustainable solutions. I liked the solar transformation dimension of the principle, as many of nature’s solutions rely on the sun to power themselves — this gives a great alternative and new ideas on how to approach our energy needs. This Biomimicry Spiral is an alternative way to approach our sustainability and environmental issues, and I think it sets up a really effective approach to figure out innovation, by asking designers to think about nature’s needs or accomplishments and “recast the location of solutions.” My favorite dimension was the “life creates conditions conducive to live, as opposed to toxic conditions that destroy life”; again, this embodies the super abstract part of this principle which I think makes it so great. By inspiring designers to focus on creating life and sustainability, you give people following the spiral a lot of wiggle room in their innovations, which is pretty unique!
This principle was a nice antithesis to SROI strategies (social return on investment), which I felt were too analytical and quantitative to properly inspire design and innovation thinking. This strategy tracks value chains of social issues — the inputs, the impact, the outputs, and overall outcome. I don’t think its effective to quantify these types of innovation, because the measure feels pretty subjective.
I think that the Living Principles strike the right balance between both of these frameworks — I feel like it gives enough facets to focus on that it’s not too abstract, but it doesn’t ask its users to measure things that are too subjective.