Development of the BioPrIns and analysis of its influence in the variety of solution concepts

Designers can obtain bio-inspiration by observing nature and it’s behavior, by reading biology books, by analyzing lists containing biological principles or by surfing on biological databases such as asknature.com. These sources of inspiration are not usually structured in a way in which engineers can fully understand the biological systems described and it has not been proven its effect on product development. Jordan (2008) proposes an intermediary, who is familiar with both, biology and technical product development, to mediate between the differences in terminology and support the communication. Hashemi Farzaneh, Helms, and Lindemann (2015) develop and evaluate visual representations and guidelines to model biological and technical systems based on six features identified in biology and engineering discipline. In this work, a list containing biological principles, called “BioPrIns” list, is developed with the aim of facilitating the transfer between disciplines by making biological information more available and understandable to engineers. On the other hand, the “BioPrIns” list provides a quick source of inspiration containing the most relevant characteristics of a biological system described with the help of images or sketches and the SAPPhIRE model of causality. The organized structure of the SAPPhIRE model in constructs facilitates the analysis of ideas and the study of the variety between them. In the following research, a design study has been carried out in order to check if the “BioPrIns” list can help in designing solutions and can enhance the variety of these solutions. For this purpose, in first place, the SAPPhIRE model and its applications have been investigated. In second place, the results obtained in a previous design study using a different list containing biological principles (Topp, 2013) have been analyzed. Finally, a new design study has been set-up with the “BioPrIns” list and the results have been analyzed and compared with the ones in Topp’s research