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Special Issue Articles
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INTRODUCTION
Analogical design (also known as design by analogy) pertains to addressing new design problems by analogy to similar, familiar design problems. Artificial intelligence (AI) research has been exploring a variety of methods of analogical design for more than 25 years (e.g., Goel, 1997; Goel & Craw, 2005; Hayes et al., 2011). At one end of the similarity spectrum, AI research has investigated within-domain case-based reasoning (Sycara et al., 1991; Goel & Chandrasekaran, 1992; Hua et al., 1996; Gebhardt et al., 1997; Maher & Gomez, 1997; Maher & Pu, 1997) as a core process of everyday routine design in which the new problem (or the target problem) is in the same domain as and very similar to a familiar problem (or a source case). On the other end of the similarity spectrum, AI research has explored cross-domain analogical reasoning (Bhatta & Goel, 1997; Qian & Gero, 1997; Kulinski & Gero, 2001; Davies et al., 2009) as a fundamental process of design creativity in which the target problem and the source case are from different domains and thus superficially less similar.
Biologically inspired design (also known as biomimicry, biomimetics, and bionics) entails cross-domain analogical reasoning. The paradigm espouses the use of biological systems as analogs for inspiring the design of technological systems as well as standards for evaluating technology designs (French, 1994; Benyus, 1997; Vogel, 2000; Vincent & Mann, 2002; Turner, 2007; Bhushan, 2009; Gleich et al., 2010; Bar-Cohen, 2011; Shu et al., 2011). Although nature has inspired many a designer in the history of design, including some famous ones like Leonardo da Vinci and the Wright brothers, it is only over the last generation that the paradigm has become a movement with a rapidly growing literature, including both patents (Bonser & Vincent, 2007) and publications (Lepora et al., 2013).
The rapid growth of the movement of biologically inspired design has led to a rapid proliferation of educational courses and programs for learning about the paradigm. For example, the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute (http://biomimicry.net/about/biomimicry38/institute/) offers a variety of courses on biomimicry for professional designers, and Georgia Tech's Center for Biologically Inspired Design (http://www.cbid.gatech.edu/) offers a sequence of undergraduate courses that leads to a certificate in biologically inspired...