Evaluating the Directed Intuitive Approach for Bioinspired Design

Abstract

Bioinspired design, the practice of looking to nature to find inspiration for solutions to engineering problems, is increasingly a desired approach to design. It allows designers to tap a wealth of timetested solutions to difficult problems in a domain less considered by designers. Only recently have researchers developed organized, systematic methods for bioinspired design. Traditionally, bioinspired design has been conducted without the benefit of any organized method. Designers relied on the informal “directed intuitive approachâ€‌ of bioinspired design, which simply directs designers to consider how nature might solve a problem. This paper presents an experiment to explore the impact of the directed approach on idea generation. This experiment is foundationally important to bioinspired engineering design method research. The results of this experiment serve as a fundamental baseline and benchmark for the comparison of more systematic, and often more involved, bioinspired design methods. A group of 121 novice designers are given one of two design problems and instructed to either generate solutions using the directed approach or to generate solutions without being prompted in any additional fashion. Based on the findings presented here, the directed approach offers designers no advantage in the average number of nonredundant ideas, quality, novelty, or variety of the solutions produced. In conclusion, systematic and organized methods for bioinspired design should be sought to effectively leverage nature's design knowledge.