In learning biologically inspired design (BID), the mapping process from problem to biological inspirations is crucial for generating novel ideas. This study determines the effects of knowledge representations related to design problems and inspirations on students' novelty of ideas generated in BID. Forty-four industrial design undergraduates were divided into four groups in four BID workshops. In each workshop, the design problem was represented in rule- and case-based formats while 220 biocards (inspirations were in concrete and abstract formats. Each group took turns to create ideas using one of four knowledge representation combinations of rule- or case-based design problems with concrete or abstract inspirations in each workshop and completed all of them throughout the workshops. Results showed that both ideas generated using the rule-based design problem with the concrete inspiration and the case-based design problem with the abstract inspiration had higher mean novelty scores than others. That implies that exclusively using highly structured representation in learning BID is not conducive to generating creative ideas. Accordingly, this study proposes a dual-track process for helping students achieve better innovation by balancing abstraction of knowledge representation in problem-solving.