Take the card home.
Living matter doesn’t respond like a screen. Before you design an interaction with it, you need to know where the response lives.
The card is a five-question tool from today’s lecture. Use it on your demonstrator to find where its response is located, then decide whether to design around it or move it.
Name the trigger (a person, or the environment?) and the response.
Does the response still happen once the organism is no longer alive?
If yes: grind it into powder, does it still work? If no: one organism, or a relationship?
So what: keep it there and design for it, or move it?
What does it ask of you, of the person who uses it, and of the organism?
In the molecule. Grind it and it still works.
In the shape. Grind it and it stops.
Needs one living organism.
Needs a relationship between organisms.
The card, with space to write your answers
The example bank, sorted by where each response lives
A speed strip: what timescale does your interaction run on?
Works to look up, and every reference and video from the lecture
Free. No email needed. Print it on A4.
Keep locating.
Every week I take one organism through these same steps in a short Reading. Some of today’s examples started there.
Subscribe freeOne Reading a week. Unsubscribe any time.
Raphael Kim is a designer and researcher working with living matter in HCI.
Biodesign Academy teaches molecular design literacy to designers, educators and researchers.
