Beavers are really interesting creatures. We know them as furry animals that build dams (they also build lodges!) and float on their backs in the river. What’s more interesting is that beavers are actually very much like product designers.

Unfortunately, product designers aren’t wood-eating rodents that slap the water's surface with their tails. However, we are similar in one aspect: niche construction.

Richard Lewontin pioneered the perspective that an organism influences its own evolution. Besides adapting to the environment, they also create the conditions of the environment, thereby affecting the conditions of its natural selection. Over time, this became “niche construction”, a term coined by Oxford biologist John Odling-Smee in 1988. “Niche”, in this case, has three distinct categories:

• Perturbational and relocational: beavers often build dams and lodges to adapt an environment to their needs. They also leave their dams: for instance, when the water body is too shallow.
• Inceptive and counteractive: bees and wasps regulate the temperature of their nests by exercising their flight wings (somewhat like vibrating). This stabilises the environment and provides a buffer between the organism and changes in the environment they have not adapted to (bees are not adapted to cold environments).
• Experimental: certain organisms change their behaviour instead of changing the environment. For example, penguins huddle to keep warm—they don’t start building igloos.

By biasing natural selection, beavers can survive longer and feed better. If they are fortunate, they might reproduce and have their offspring survive. When that happens, a new generation of beavers is born, ready to inherit the dam and repair any spots.

The process of ancestral beavers passing down the dams to their descendants is known as ecological inheritance. Generations of beavers can be born in the same dam without ever having to survive being born outside of safety.

In one similar aspect, humans also experience ecological inheritance through language. Similar to how it is non-genetic (like a beaver dam), generations of humans modify and build on the language inherited from predecessors. This cumulative culture is born out of a need to pass down a complex set of knowledge, skills, and beliefs needed to survive in the world—it is an adaptation, according to psychologists Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom, and has evolved as a “by-product”.

However, the dam’s impact doesn’t just cover beavers: it is also an agent of change. Organisms must adapt to the beaver dam through experimental or counteractive niche construction. Some might even tear the dam down.

The unique difference between the beaver and us is that the way we construct our niche covers all three distinct categories:

• We relocate ourselves when our environment is no longer favourable (at least, in the pre-modern world). Humans settled in areas where food is abundant; there are warmer temperatures etc.
• We created houses out of various materials to have shelter from the natural and societal environment
• We also adapt to the environment around us, such as building around the base of mountains
• When the environment changes, but we don’t need to change our environment, we adapt with temporary behaviours. For instance, we wear thicker layers of clothing during colder seasons.

While our physical world has made many leaps and bounds, part of this niche construction is the digital world, where our adaptations happen in the cognitive space.

Digital Niche Construction

What does the magnifying glass mean to you when it is on the phone? Why does an “X” signify that you can “close” something? Over decades of evolution in web technology and product design, we see many sturdy and long-lasting mental models that we have built for ourselves and adapted to.

Human evolution is now affected beyond the physical world. Our mental models in the physical world are not translated with the digital ones, sometimes almost interchangeable. What we have built in the digital world can create a profound impact on human evolution beyond just behaviour.

When you go out for dinner, you go through a series of non-linear steps in deciding which restaurant to go to. When you are at the restaurant, your mental model shifts, and your mind runs through another set of non-linear steps to decide what to eat. This mental model is interchangeable with the mental model behind food delivery.

This juxtaposition is just one of many that show how a previously physical experience has been translated into a digital experience. Yet, we can still navigate both experiences with relative ease—the mental model that we are using is similar.

Contrast that with the experience of purchasing clothes: you don’t have the opportunity to try clothes out. Instead, you have to rely on sizing charts and risk purchasing clothes that are not sized for you. To address this problem, fashion websites often have:

• Information about the model’s height and clothes sizes so you can use the model as a reference
• Recommended sizes based on your input, such as your waist and chest circumference

Fashion companies are also investing in augmented reality (AR) technology so you can try on clothes without going to the store.

Over time, the digital experience is slowly morphing into the physical experience. Soon the mental models will be similar.

Throughout these comparisons, we see that we adapt and create mental models as we navigate the digital experience. These products and services have become agents of change, moving the needle in human evolution. We learnt how a search bar worked through Yahoo, Google, and their predecessors. In the process, we also learnt that when it takes too long to give us the results. Then, we learnt how to be frustrated at a laptop screen.

From the view of an environment of adaptation, we can see that the digital and physical worlds are both parts of one singular environment—interactions with events and elements of both worlds create multiple evolutionary behaviours.

Much like beavers, product designers construct and adapt niches, but in the digital space. Our “dams”—user interfaces and experiences—create agents of change that cause others to evolve new mental models. Over time, this comes back to us; other product designers can adapt our work and create new versions that we use, thereby causing us to evolve new mental models.

With this perspective in mind, as we leverage human and social psychology to solve business problems, are we considering enough in our design work that respects this position of change?

Consider TikTok, one of the most successful social media applications in the world that was founded in 2016. Like most tools, it has positive and negative effects. One study showed that TikTok videos can distort our self-image as we don’t have an awareness of what we are doing to our brains. In contrast, we also saw TikTok being a massive boon during the quarantine, encouraging activities such as exercising, growing house plants and gaining new skills.

For product designers that are now thinking: “is my work really that impactful that it can shape evolution?” Don’t let it stop you from doing your best work. Another study in 2021 by Dr Alexandra Masciantonio argued that social networking sites still need more empirical studies to go beyond limitations. Doing that will allow us to generalise more reliably and understand how they shape human interactions.

Essentially: it’s not so clear. Most of the time, it is highly unlikely that we will change human evolution with a single screen. However, collectively, product designers have the power to create experiences that drive net-positive behaviours. Instead of reminding the user on their profile page to complete their profile and leveraging on (1) human desire for order; (2) the endowed-progress effect; (3) the Zeigarnik effect; and (4) the goal-gradient effect, what if you created real value in completing their profile?

As more product designers leverage on different parts of the users’ brains to get them to do what we want them to do, we must also consider whether we are using them positively. Dark patterns don’t exist for no reason: we started hiding and masking unsubscription call-to-actions to meet a business goal. As a product designer, you get to advise and champion an ethical stand.

We aren’t beavers: we are conscious of the agents of change and byproducts. We know of the rippling effects it has. We know that our work can transcend beyond just an interface. As indirect as it is, product designers are still responsible and accountable for the effects of human behaviour with their design. While you are busy creating specs and tidying your Figma files, perhaps also consider how much evolution you might be influencing and start viewing your work from the lens of evolutionary psychology.

Thanks for reading ? Before you go,

??‍? Connect with me on LinkedIn.
??‍♀️ Leave your comments, thoughts, and opinions!
✏️ I also write From a Junior, a free newsletter that discusses pertinent and salient topics like these. Feel free to check it out!