Adaptive Evolution of Teaching Practices in Biologically Inspired Design

Abstract

Statistical analysis of the mechanisms and processes in biological organisms (derived from published, peer-reviewed, research papers) reveals that there are ‘design’ rules which could be used to facilitate technical design, thus producing biologically inspired design without the necessity for the designer using such a system to invoke biology or biological expertise since this has already been done when the rules were extracted. Even so, this is not a necessary and sufficient condition for good design. Four principles derived from the Russian system TRIZ (widely used in technology as an objective system for solving problems inven- tively) are highlighted and summarised as Local Quality; Consolidation or Merging; Dynamics; Prior Cushioning. More design rules, derived in the same way, are needed to expand the importance of information (sensu lato) and mate- rials,