How might an idea’s lifecycle survive its environment where ideas compete “red in tooth and claw” for survival. We will look at how nature and the adaptation of organisms can show us how digital landscapes are shaped by their technological environment. Are there universal truths in biological systems that can help us in creating digital products that evolve with the ever changing digital economy. We will explore where UX, design and technology can come together to create safe environments to allow fragile products to evolve and thrive in the wild.

1. The Struggle for Existence.
Hannah Tempest @palindromic_han

2. The phone is an ecosystem that can
support a host of tiny specialists,
each competing for the resource
of our attention

3. The specialist beaks
of Darwin’s finches

4. GROUND
FINCH
WARBLER
FINCH
Specialist beaks

5. Cosmic luck didn’t
give the Ground Finch
exactly the kind of
beak it needs.

6. Digital Disruptors find new spaces,
with no competition, where they
can prosper rather than compete in
an already crowded marketplace.

7. Natural selection
and so evolution
has a set of rules,
it is a complex
mechanism
but one which
when recognised
can be consciously
harnessed

8. The tree
of life

9. The strong, well
built and well
maintained
survive

10. The strong, well
built and well
maintained
survive

12. Only 1% of
life is still in
existence today.
The other 99%
are extinct.

13. Extinction is the rule
not the exception.

14. Extinction is the rule
not the exception.

16. Over 50%
of all apps ever
made have been
deleted by Apple

17. Most apps are extinct because
another has taken it’s place and is
consuming it’s resources.

18. Most apps are extinct because
another has taken it’s place and is
consuming it’s resources.

19. This constant flux of
species into new spaces
and the replacement of the
animals in those spaces

20. The Mechanics of Evolution

21. “If some of these many species
become modified and improved,
others will have to be improved in
a corresponding degree,
or they will be exterminated.”
We expect to see 5 million apps
in the Apple Store by 2020
The most successful apps are
updated on average every 10 days
Charles Darwin

22. “If some of these many species
become modified and improved,
others will have to be improved in
a corresponding degree,
or they will be exterminated.”
We expect to see 5 million apps
in the Apple Store by 2020
The most successful apps are
updated on average every 10 days
Charles Darwin

23. A species will not
maintain an infinite
number of variations

24. Struggle for existence leading to the
preservation of profitable deviations
of structure or instinct.
Charles Darwin

25. A strong app will release
many variations.
Variations that benefit
should be preserved.
Those that have a negative
effect should be pruned.

26. “Without deviation from
the norm progress
is not possible.”
Frank Zappa

27. Barriers to
creating your
engine of
evolution

28. Variation and deviation
minimised to avoid risk
Barriers to
creating your
engine of
evolution

29. Variation and deviation
minimised to avoid risk
Holding on to non-profitable
deviations
Barriers to
creating your
engine of
evolution

30. Variation and deviation
minimised to avoid risk
Holding on to non-profitable
deviations
Random variation without
direction or structure
Barriers to
creating your
engine of
evolution

31. Minimising variation and
deviation to avoid risk

32. Holding on to
non-profitable deviations

35. Random variation without
direction or structure

37. A complex machine in a
perfect state

38. HUMAN
EYE
An evolutionary
impossibility?

39. STARFISH EYE SPOT
STARFISH

40. The starfish’s
eye is the
perfect MVP
Uses the least resources possible and the simplest
components it can.
MIMIMUM
Has enough features to consume molluscs and
position it’s limbs effectively. Enough sensory power
to outsmart it’s competitors and comparators.
VIABLE
Has a defined set of components that could be
improved individually in future iterations.
PRODUCT

41. STARFISH
EYE SPOT
HUMAN
EYE

42. STARFISH
EYE SPOT
HUMAN
EYE

43. Complexity for complexities sake
does not make a product
more successful.

44. Nature is not wasteful
HUMAN CAT WHALE BAT

45. Nature is not wasteful
HUMAN CAT WHALE BAT

46. A technology of amazing
possibility released to the
world for free in the hope of
creating collective good.
GPS

47. What can we re-use
to fit an entirely
different context?
Ask our team:

48. STAR
NOSED
MOLE

49. Throw resources at
the right feature
STAR NOSED MOLE
BRAINPOWER

50. What could
we live
without?

51. Beauty and Delight

54. “Your scientists
were so preoccupied
with whether or not
they could, they
didn’t stop to think
if they should.”
Dr Ian Malcolm,Jurassic Park.

55. Delight over
performance
PEAHEN
PEACOCK

56. Selection by positive
feedback undermines
natural selection
The Fisherian
Runaway

57. Selection by positive
feedback undermines
natural selection
The Fisherian
Runaway

58. Desire
feedback
loop

59. Desire
feedback
loop

60. Our initial delight over a
curated online experience
has runaway from us

61. Our initial delight over a
curated online experience
has runaway from us

62. The problem only comes when through striving for
delight we compromise our fitness and leave
ourselves vulnerable to being left behind

63. Practical and
delightful
Elegant, sleek, fast, powerful and beautiful.
But every adaptation is a practical feature for
operating at the very peak of it’s environment.

64. To conclude

65. It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed
with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the
bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms
crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these
elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other,
and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner,
have all been produced by laws acting around us.
Charles Darwin

66. It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed
with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the
bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms
crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these
elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other,
and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner,
have all been produced by laws acting around us.
Charles Darwin

67. Words by
Thank you
Hannah Tempest
@palindromic_han
Pictures by
Emily Trotter
@emilytrotter