Case-dependence of Level-based Idea Space Variety for Systematic Biologically-Inspired Design

Abstract

As Biologically-Inspired Design is receiving more and more attention, methodologies and tools are developed to support the systematic bio-ideation process. However, few experiments have been conducted that objectively measure the impact of bio-ideation methods or tools on the design outcomes of creativity efforts. This paper investigates the impact of two biological stimuli conditions – using short natural-language descriptions accompanied by a photograph of the involved biological system (1) or accompanied by a graphical illustration of the biological solution principle (2) – on the variety of the generated idea set. Hereto, biological strategies from one relevant functional class of AskNature's Biomimicry Taxonomy are used as stimuli and their impact is quantified. Participants, 59 students divided into three groups, are all submitted to the no tool condition for a first design challenge from which the intended balancing effect of random group assignment is verified. During the second and third challenge, one group remains a control group and two groups receive one of the AskNature stimuli variants. The results show variable success for increasing variety – ranging from status quo to a 108.2% increase in variety at the physical principle level – indicating that using a functional category from AskNature has the potential to support conceiving more dissimilar idea set on the most abstract levels of the genealogy tree. However such performance is not guaranteed for each challenge.