The biocard BID method developed at the Technical University of Denmark supports the design team in all phases from the initial requirements analysis to the design of the desired artefacts. The method is named after the biocards which are inspirational cards describing a functional principle for a biological phenomena.

The biocard method is a five step procedure that is used to find and describe relevant biological solutions to functional problems.

First step is to identify the relevant functional problems and to rephrase them to make a search possible. In general this is done by formulating the functional problem in terms taken from the specific product and then generalise these formulations, for example as key-words.

Second step is the search for biological analogies and a number of different sources can be used: Intuitive brainstorm based on own knowledge, general world wide-web-search, dialogue with an expert (a biologist), library search based on textbooks and library search in scientific journals.

In the third step the biological analogies are analysed which is done through a literature study or by consulting relevant biologists.

The fourth step is to extract the relevant information about the analogies and describe them on biocards.

Each card represents a conceptual idea and is used in the fifth step to generate design proposals.

Biocards
Introduction to the BID-method, a video by Gabriel Kure and Pernille Vergmann