Method of mapping interdisciplinary research and practice at the intersection of biology and design

Ubiquitous, multi-meaning terms used to describe new ideas, finding etc, presents a significant barrier for cross-disciplinary discourse especially between the arts and sciences. The research presented in this paper tackles the problem of terminological disharmony specifically within the process of contextualising creative design practice informed by biological science and/or its applications. The study is implemented in three stages; lexical semantic theories and methods are applied to corpus-based investigations to assess the scope of biologically informed disciplines (BID) terminology; results are analysed using statistical and qualitative methods and mapped against known academic domains; the resulting map is evaluated via the analysis and consequent positioning of practice-based biologically informed textile research. The findings suggest that the experimental framework enables the presentation of work within an established network of theories and concepts with transparent disciplinary connections. As such, presents an new method of mapping design practice within the BID landscape that mitigates terminological disharmony.