Seed Research Grant
Bio-inspired character and game design for ecological awareness and environmental education
Granted by: Ozyegin University
Data gathering: February-June 2025
Analysis & Publication: Ongoing
The project’s research questions are:
What should be the appropriate medium, and what are its prominent features, to design for ecological awareness and environmental education of the younger generations?
How can that medium facilitate nature engagement while encouraging its users to use it?
This project aims to raise awareness, particularly among the younger generation, about topics such as ecosystem balance, natural cycles, and the importance of biodiversity through a game, a medium with which they are familiar and willing to engage. The project hypothesizes that the younger generation has a very close relationship with visual media and games, and participation in production is an effective way to enhance the immersive effect of games. Within this projection, participatory design sessions based on bio-inspired design principles are employed to engage the participants with nature as a speculative narrative.
Whilst the main goal is to design a bio-inspired and participatory game for ecological awareness and environmental education, the scope of this research is limited to the exploratory phase of the game design project. This study explores the motivations and challenges faced by younger people in relation to their experiences with ecologically oriented gaming. It assesses their competency to employ bio-inspired principles and convenience in participatory design practice.
Projections:
This research is ongoing as a long-term research project, and data collection is continuing with four participants using in-depth ethnographic methods. Upon completion of the study, the design of educational materials aimed at increasing ecological awareness will be initiated. These materials may incorporate games or gamified tools. In this context, the project holds potential for securing large-scale research funding and fostering collaboration with the gaming industry.
Presentation of the outputs of the assignment in the course Bio-inspired Design
Boga, M. (2024, September 12-13). Bio-inspired Design: A Multidisciplinary Approach for Fostering Ecological Empathy. [Conference presentation]. Envisioning Actionable Transformation for Climate Resilience and Societal Change through Transdisciplinary Dialogues, Zagreb, Croatia.
Abstract:
Bio-inspired Design: A Multidisciplinary Approach for Fostering Ecological Empathy
This proposal explores the outcomes of a Bio-inspired Design course, investigating the intersection of ecology, design thinking, and critical/speculative approaches through digital media. Students designed bio-inspired fictional characters, analyzing their strengths/weaknesses, ecological networks, and the impact of habitat changes. The course fostered student engagement with nature and enhanced biological literacy through scenario-building based on hypothetical creatures and series of events. This multidisciplinary approach is promising for engaging young generations with nature, promoting empathy for non-human life as a more-than-human approach, and encouraging conservation efforts.
The framework employs both agonistic and consensus-oriented aspects. First, a speculative approach is used to manipulate the ecosystem and generate alternative scenarios. This necessitates a critical examination of the subject, leading to engagement, empathy, and, ultimately, a sense of connection with other living beings. Second, the project requires a holistic and critical analysis of the entire system, reflecting both agonistic and consensus-oriented aspects of design thinking. It needs to attack the context (Dorst, 2015) first and reconcile and meditate at some level. Finally, the project utilizes digital game elements, often seen as isolating youngsters from nature, to create a bridge for connecting with the natural world, transforming an agonistic approach into a consensus-oriented one.
This proposal analyzes how industrial design students approached biological entities, ecosystems, and interrelationships by creating fictional game characters and narratives. This process enabled them to grasp cause-and-effect relationships within an ecosystem and the interconnectedness of nature. Bio-inspired approaches in design suffer from designers' lack of biological literacy (Boga & Timur, 2016), and the young generation lacks nature contact (Louv, 2005). The method sees the natural cycle as a narrative to analyze and speculate it by interference and develop scenarios by a critical approach.
The project tasked students with generating scenarios based on the character’s traits and relationship with prey, predators, climate, and topography. This analysis highlighted the cascading impact of even small changes within a system. The paper will unfold the project outputs through a content analysis of the fictional scenarios based on the creature characteristics, ecological dynamics, interrelations of fictional entities, etc. This project is the foundation for a broader game design project to understand young people's motivations and challenges in engaging with nature.
Keywords: Bio-inspired design, Critical and speculative design, Design thinking, More than human, Multidisciplinarity
References:
Boga, M. & Timur, S. (2016). Exploring Biomimicry in the Students’ Design Process. Design and Technology Education: an International Journal, 21(1), 21-31.
Dorst, K. (2015). Frame innovation: Create new thinking by design. The MIT Press.
Louv, R. (2005). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. Chapel Hill.
