The Effect of Abstraction Methods in Bio-Inspired Design – A Workshop and a Team Project Perspective

Abstract

Bio-inspired design can inspire highly innovative technical solutions. However, biological inspirations in most cases have to be abstracted to transfer useful analogies to the technical domain. Is it worth the effort to use supporting methods, namely BioCards and KoMBi, or can design teams develop bio-inspired solutions of the same quality without these methods? To answer these questions, we conducted workshops with pairs of engineering design students collaborating in an agile development project. The results of our study show that the task-specific quality of solution ideas increased significantly when using the BioCards method. The analysis of the prototypes developed throughout the project shows that the use of both abstraction methods has the highest effect on the abstraction level of analogical transfer and on the depth of understanding of the biological inspiration. These results indicate that the use of abstraction methods is recommendable for bio-inspired design teams in a comparable setting.