Pentelovitch Noah, Nagel Jacquelyn K
Research and Advanced Development Division, Helen of Troy-Home and Outdoors, New York, NY 10001, USA.
Department of Engineering, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA.
Biomimetics (Basel). 2022 May 18;7(2):63. doi: 10.3390/biomimetics7020063.
Bio-inspired design (BID) has the potential to evolve the way engineers and designers solve problems. Several tools have been developed to assist one or multiple phases of the BID process. These tools, typically studied individually and through the performance of college students, have yielded interesting results for increasing the novelty of solutions. However, not much is known about the likelihood of the tools being integrated into the design and development process of established companies. The mixed-methods study presented in this paper seeks to address this gap by providing industry engineers and designers hands-on training with the BID process and four BID tools. Understanding which tools are valued and could be adopted in an industry context is the goal. The results indicate multiple encouraging outcomes including that industry practitioners highly valued the process framework tool (BID canvas) as it allows for flexibility in tool use, as well as valued learning with a suite of BID tools rather than a single one to accommodate different workflows and ways of thinking.
生物启发式设计（BID）有潜力改变工程师和设计师解决问题的方式。已经开发了几种工具来辅助BID过程的一个或多个阶段。这些工具通常是单独研究的，并且是通过大学生的表现来研究的，在增加解决方案的新颖性方面取得了有趣的成果。然而，对于这些工具被整合到成熟公司的设计和开发过程中的可能性，人们了解得并不多。本文提出的混合方法研究旨在通过为行业工程师和设计师提供BID过程和四种BID工具的实践培训来弥补这一差距。了解哪些工具在行业背景下有价值并且可以被采用是目标。结果显示了多个令人鼓舞的成果，包括行业从业者高度重视过程框架工具（BID画布），因为它允许在工具使用上具有灵活性，并且重视使用一套BID工具而不是单个工具来学习，以适应不同的工作流程和思维方式。
