Much of the literature on biologically inspired design makes two, often unstated and largely unexamined, assumptions: (i) The process of biologically inspired design is independent of the biological domain, and (ii) the design process leads to multifunctional designs. In this paper, we perform a meta-analysis of 74 case studies of biologically inspired design in the Design Study Library. We begin by noting that biologically inspired design has two core processes: problem-driven design and solution-based design. We find that the first assumption about the domain independence of these design processes is questionable. Our analysis indicates that the problem-driven process of biologically inspired design is more prevalent in some domains, whereas the solution-based design process is more common in other domains. Our analysis also indicates that the solution-based process leads to multifunctional designs more often than the problem-driven process. These findings may have useful implications not only for building information-processing theories of biologically inspired design, but also for developing pedagogical techniques for teaching about the paradigm and computational tools for supporting its practice.

Digital libraries of case studies of analogical design have been popular since their advent in the early 1990s. We consider four benefits of digital libraries of case studies of analogical design in the context of biologically inspired design. First, a digital library affords documentation. The 83 case studies in our work come from 8 years of extended, collaborative design projects in an interdisciplinary class on biologically inspired design. Second, a digital library provides on-demand access to the case studies. We describe a web-based library of case studies of biologically inspired design called the Design Study Library (DSL). Third, a compilation of case studies supports analyses of broader patterns and trends. As an example, an analysis of DSL's case studies found that environmental sustainability was a major factor in about a third of the case studies and an explicit design goal in about a fourth. Fourth, a digital library of case studies can support analogical learning. Preliminary results from an exploratory study indicate that DSL may support novice learning about the processes of biologically inspired design.