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The Design Study Library: Compiling, Analyzing and Using Biologically Inspired Design Case Studies

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Design Computing and Cognition '14

Abstract

We describe an interactive tool called the Design Study Library (DSL) that provides access to a digital library of case studies of biologically inspired design. Each case study in DSL describes a project in biologically inspired design from the inception of a design problem to the completion of a conceptual design. The approximately 70 case studies in DSL come from several years of collaborative design projects in an interdisciplinary class on biologically inspired design. Compilation of these case studies enables deeper analysis of biologically inspired design projects. An analysis of some 40 case studies indicates that environmental sustainability was a major factor in about two thirds of the projects. DSL also appears to support learning about biologically inspired design. Preliminary results from a small, formative pilot study indicate that DSL supports learning about the processes of biologically inspired design.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the instructors and students of the Georgia Tech ME/ISyE/MSE/BME/BIOL 4740 class from 2006 to 2012. We thank the US National Science Foundation for its support of this research through a CreativeIT Grant (#0855916) titled “Computational Tools for Enhancing Creativity in Biologically Inspired Engineering Design,” and a TUES Grant (#1022778) titled “Biologically Inspired Design: A Novel Biology-Engineering Curriculum.” This work has benefited from many discussions with our colleagues at Georgia Tech’s Design & Intelligence Laboratory and Center for Biologically Inspired Design, especially Michael Helms, Spencer Rugaber and Marc Weissburg. Also, Titilayo Craig helped with some of the experiments with DSL. Finally, we note that the analysis of the relationship between biologically inspired design and sustainability in this paper has been adapted from Goel et al. [45].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ashok Goel, Gongbo Zhang, Bryan Wiltgen, Yuqi Zhang, Swaroop Vattam & Jeannette Yen

Authors
  1. Ashok Goel
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  2. Gongbo Zhang
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  3. Bryan Wiltgen
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  4. Yuqi Zhang
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  5. Swaroop Vattam
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  6. Jeannette Yen
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Correspondence to Ashok Goel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and School of Architecture, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

    John S. Gero

  2. University College London, Bartlett School of Architecture, London, United Kingdom

    Sean Hanna

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Goel, A., Zhang, G., Wiltgen, B., Zhang, Y., Vattam, S., Yen, J. (2015). The Design Study Library: Compiling, Analyzing and Using Biologically Inspired Design Case Studies. In: Gero, J., Hanna, S. (eds) Design Computing and Cognition '14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14956-1_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14956-1_35

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-14955-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-14956-1

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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