Publication
Effects of Abstraction on Selecting Relevant Biological Phenomena for Biomimetic Design
AbstractThe natural-language approach to identifying biological analogies exploits the existing format of much biological knowledge, beyond databases created for biomimetic design. However, designers may need to select analogies from search results, during which biases may exist toward: specific words in descriptions of biological phenomena, familiar organisms and scales, and strategies that match preconceived solutions. Therefore, we conducted two experiments to study the effect of abstraction on overcoming these biases and selecting biological phenomena based on analogical similarities. Abstraction in our experiments involved replacing biological nouns with hypernyms. The first experiment asked novice designers to choose between a phenomenon suggesting a highly useful strategy for solving a given problem, and another suggesting a less-useful strategy, but featuring bias elements. The second experiment asked novice designers to evaluate the relevance of two biological phenomena that suggest similarly useful strategies to solve a given problem. Neither experiment demonstrated the anticipated benefits of abstraction. Instead, our abstraction led to: (1) participants associating nonabstracted words to design problems and (2) increased difficulty in understanding descriptions of biological phenomena. We recommend investigating other ways to implement abstraction when developing similar tools or techniques that aim to support biomimetic design.PDF
Related Resources
See what’s new.
2024
Three Ways to Keep Learning from AU All Year LongCheck out how to continue learning from AU 2023 all year long…
1995
Multiple scattering as a diffusion processMultiple scattering in participating media is generally a complex…
2016
Crowdsourced FabricationIn recent years, extensive research in the HCI literature has explored…
2021
Validating a Termite-Inspired Construction Coordination Mechanism Using an Autonomous RobotMany species of termites build large, structurally complex mounds, and…
Get in touch
Something pique your interest? Get in touch if you’d like to learn more about Autodesk Research, our projects, people, and potential collaboration opportunities.
Contact us