Our work with the Cambridge iGEM Team
When you’re faced with the entire living kingdoms as a materials library, what do you design?
How do scientists think about the long-term future of the research they are doing in the lab?
Our work with the team
In July 2009 we joined the students in their two week crash course as they began to learn about synthetic biology. Although we're designers, not scientists, we learnt the science too.
Then, over the summer, we helped them to think outside the petri dish while we got to think about how synthetic biology meets design.
On day one, after the crash course, their first question was: "What should we design"? As designers, we're always asking that as well.
A few weeks in to the project, the team were underway, designing E.coli that can secrete many different colours visible to the naked eye. We've called that new variety E.chromi.
We started to think about what that means in the longer term and ran a workshop with the team. We presented seven future scenarios about groups, services laws and products inspired by E.chromi, from now and up to one hundred years into the future.
Then the team split into groups to explore the bigger picture of their molecular-scale work.
Armed with a suitcase of props, we explored how design can help science innovate, teaching methods of story-telling, innovation and design thinking as well as helping the students think about the social, cultural and ethical implications of their research.
Design proposals: Synthetic Colour, a timeline →
Click the image below to view seven design proposals utilising the E. chromi bacteria on a timeline spanning 100 years into the future. We presented these ideas to the team to get them thinking about the wider implcations of their work in the lab.
