Site Tutorial

Step 1. Explore the search and browse functions and visit a few strategy pages. You might also want to look at the Biomimicry Taxonomy to become familiar with the categories the database uses.

Step 2. Think of different ways to pose your question in terms of what you want to accomplish (rather than what you think you want to make). For example, instead of asking, "How would Nature design an HVAC system?" ask, "How would Nature distribute gases?" Then type your question into the search box. Note that in search, you can focus in on categories such as Products, Organisms, Strategies, or People.

Alternatively, you can go to Browse and go through the tri-browse looking for terms that relate to your challenge. For example, for "ventilate," you would look under "Get, store, and distribute resources." This takes you to four other categories, one of which is "Distribute" and under that you'll find "Gases." Click on that and you’ll find a number of strategies having to do with distributing gases.

Keep in mind that the database is not static – it changes as it becomes modified by users who add keywords, reconnect search terms to new results, etc. So you may get different results over time, even when using the same search terms used previously.

The way AskNature has you search and browse may have you thinking about your design challenge in a whole new way…which is the beginning to having the world of Nature’s design genius at your fingertips.

Here are the rules for how the search on Ask Nature works:

• Search queries are not case sensitive
• Queries search for whole words, if you want to search for part of a word, use the wildcard (*).  For example, water* will match: waterways, watershed, etc.
• If you want to search for a phrase, enclose it in double-quotes: "repel water"
• Fuzzy search - if you want to find a word that is close, prefix your word with the fuzzy modifier (~): purify~ water
• Modifiers - you can use AND, OR or NOT to chain query terms or phrases together: "extract water" AND clean
• Required terms - you can prefix a term or phrase with a + to only return results that have that term: pure clean extract +water
• Prohibited terms - you can prefix a term or phrase with a - to exclude any results that contain that term: flight -bird
• Grouping - you can enclose sets or terms or phrases in parenthases to group them together: +(clean OR purify) +water