2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Enhancing the Quality of Biologically Inspired Solutions in a Classroom Design Task

Presented at Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED) - Emerging and Sustainable Design Practices

This study seeks to explore whether exposure to biologically inspired design can enhance the quality of undergraduate student engineering design solutions, with a specific focus on requirement fulfillment. Motivated by a gap in the literature regarding the direct impact of biologically inspired design on student outcomes, this research aims to address the lack of empirical evidence on the effectiveness of biologically inspired design as a pedagogical tool. While existing literature extensively explores the "how" of biologically inspired design implementation, such as frameworks and methodologies, there is limited understanding of its tangible effects on design quality for novice designers (students). This study fills this gap by investigating whether biologically inspired design principles lead to more innovative and effective solutions, enhancing creativity, sustainability, and problem-solving skills. Using a two-condition experimental design, participants were exposed to either a biologically inspired design intervention or a control video before completing a design challenge. The results revealed mixed findings: while early integration of biologically inspired design correlated with better alignment to design requirements, the presence of biologically inspired design elements in solutions was negatively associated with rubric scores and the use of biologically inspired design priming did not correlate with design performance. Ultimately, this research contributes to the growing body of knowledge on biologically inspired design in engineering education, emphasizing its potential to improve student design while identifying key areas for further study and improvement.

Authors

Mikayla Dutkiewicz Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University [biography]

Mikayla Dutkiewicz is an undergraduate in Human Factors Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Her research is centered on exploring the impacts of biologically inspired design on engineering education, particularly how these principles can enhance engineering solutions.

After earning her undergraduate degree, Mikayla plans to pursue a Master's Degree in Human Factors, aiming to continue her research, leveraging human factors principles to further explore the application of biologically inspired design.
Bryan Watson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2222-6716 Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Daytona Beach [biography]

Bryan Watson, PE earned his Ph.D. at the Georgia Institute of Technology and his B.S. in Systems Engineering at the United States Naval Academy in 2009. After graduating, Bryan joined the nuclear Navy, serving as a submarine officer onboard the U.S.S Louisville and at the Naval Prototype Training Unit from 2009-2017. Significant milestones include earning the Master Training Specialist Certification (the military’s highest instructor accreditation), Nuclear Professional Engineer Certification, two Naval Achievement Medals, the Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal, and a Naval Commendation Medal for his work troubleshooting and repairing the Moored Training Ship 635’s reactor and electrical distribution faults. Following his transition from active duty, Bryan earned his PhD as a member of both the Computation and Advancement of Sustainable Systems Lab, where he developed a new method for distributed system demand estimation, and at the Sustainable Design and Manufacturing lab, where his work focused on increasing System of System resilience. Bryan’s work has been published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, Journal of Mechanical Design, and IEEE’s Systems Journal.

At Embry-Riddle, Bryan’s current work is focused on investigating the use of biologically inspired design to increase the resilience of modern system. The goal of their work is more reliable services to users, increased user safety, and increased sustainability for connected manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure systems.
Dr. Alexander R. Murphy http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8806-6378 Florida Polytechnic University [biography]

Dr. Alexander Murphy is currently an Assistant Professor at Florida Polytechnic University. Before this position, he held a Research Associate appointment at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). He was awarded an ASEE eFellows fellowship funded by NSF for the postdoctoral research position at UTD. He completed my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in July of 2021 at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. In Spring of 2018, he was awarded an NSF GRFP fellowship in STEM Education and Learning Research. Dr. Murphy's research areas include engineering design theory, design methodology, design cognition, design education and engineering education. His research involves human-subject studies with both quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques including experiment design, rubric development, inter-rater analysis, and semi-structured and structured interviews. His current research is focused on exploring how system representation affects engineering designer behavior, how trained facilitation impacts the design process, and how experience affects students’ approaches to CAD modeling.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on July 31, 2025

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