The Local Culture of Biohacking:
How can we build an understand of the local and regional culture of Biohacking through ethnography and contextual research methodologies?
Project goals
Gain a holistic understanding of the local culture of biohacking and develop insights that might lead to possible opportunities for problems the community of biohackers may face. Become a better designer by improving research capabilities through contextual inquiries and ethnographic methodologies.
Opportunity space
Through our cultural probe and interview methodologies we can synthesize a solution that will educate the local community on what biohacking is in order to expand awareness and visibility while at the same time conducting contextual research on their relationship with biohacking in order to create a service innovation that mitigates an unmet need.
proposed solution
Build an eye catching display that will draw people in and make it easy for them to interact with it so that we can gain as much quantitative and qualitative data in order to build our holistic understanding of biohacking within the community.
Solution Evaluation
There was a lack of understanding what the word biohacking meant within the local community. We knew people were participating in biohacking activities they just didn’t know it fell under that category. We needed to reframe our approach to the probe and the language we were using in order to attract participants to engage and also educate them at the same time that what they were doing could be considered biohacking.
solution iteration
Create a more interactive cultural probe that explains what biohacking means. The interactive process utilizes everyday activities that people participate in in order to create association. Provide a qualitative survey that expands from the generic activities to more in depth biohacking processes.
OUTCOME
After gathering all of our research and moving through additional rounds of synthesis and ideation we came up with FingerFoods. Our research concluded that diet was of high importance to people, yet they did not have the time necessary to dedicate to making the right choices or tracking their progress. We proposed an all in one solution that provides a service that can accomplish both for consumers. FingerFoods is a speculative design relying on many technologies that have not been fully realized yet, however the strategy is based on progression of current technologies and what we think they will be capable of in the future. We received extremely positive feedback when we presented our solution to the local community that we interviewed throughout the process.
