Introduction of the ideality tool for sustainable design

Sustainability strategies in nature are studied, translated to design principles and used as a base for bio-inspired sustainability tools such as the life principles and the ideality design tools. While the life principles tool reflects a holistic view, the ideality tool is derived from a technical view that might be more inherent and applicable for engineers, observing biological systems as if they were technical systems. In this paper we demonstrate how to use the ideality tool by two case studies. The first one demonstrates the tool in a sustainable design context and the second one demonstrates the tool in a biomimetic design context. In addition, we describe an experiment that compares the ideality tool and the life principles tool. Both tools have a major value as sustainability tools and there is no difference between them in terms of users' perceptions regarding the tool. However, the ideality tool has an advantage in terms of the tool validity. Students who used the life principle tool significantly missed more sustainability criteria identified by experts compared to students who used the ideality tool.