Yanqianfang Sun
NEST 2025-2035
Individual project
2021 May-Aug
INITIATIVE
In China, women in large cities choose to delay or even not to have children because they are concerned that having children may affect their career development. This has a negative impact on the overall development of the country and the mental health of individuals. I hope to explore this topic in-depth and explore possible future scenarios though a speculative project.
TARGET USERS
Female of child-bearing age in young generation
- Who is afraid about the risk of pregnancy such as cesarean and postpartum recovery
- Who have difficulties getting pregnant
- Who is afraid of the negative influence on employment because of pregnancy.
WHAT IF
NEST was a service platform introduced by hospitals and government. The core of the service was a type of artificial womb called NEST that could cultivate baby by collecting the sperm and egg. The costumer then track the condition of the baby on the official application and use the mummy enhanced experience offered by the NEST to improve the experience of being an expectant mother.
RESEARCH & LEARNINGS
Signals for the future.
I found that bioengineering has become a hot topic in recent years. So I decided to focus my point on bioengineering.
Then I developed possible trends of bioengineering for the future.
Embryo editing
- Precedented (used on a newborn by a doctor)
- Suffered much criticism.
- Forbidden by the government.
Artificial organ
- Precedented (several kinds of organs can be artificial)
- Supported by the government and most of the people
- But also suffered some criticism for the social and moral aspects.
Stem cell Cryopreservation
- Remain to be seen (People just freeze their stem cells and wait for 10-20 years to use them. No one uses them now)
- Some people questioned the effectiveness.
I picked artificial organs because they had the largest speculative value because it was a progress for humans from the perspective of technology. But this progress crushed human’s traditional perception. And it also had enough realizability because several kinds of organs such as kidney and womb can be artificial.
Deep into artificial organs
artificial kidney
- mature (already developed 3D technology printed kidneys,
stem cell cultured kidneys and transplantation of animal kidneys)
- supported a lot with little criticism.
artificial heart
- huge difficulties (the first real artificial heart came out with a lot of disadvantages in 2021)
- supported a lot with little criticism.
artificial womb
- Precedented (already used on a goat in 2017)
- Suffered a lot of criticism but was supported by some people.
So I decided to choose an artificial womb. I thought the artificial womb had the highest speculative value because this organ represented the creation of a new life. And it also had enough realizability because an artificial womb for a baby sheep had been created in 2017.
DEVELOP
Future wheel for exploring preferable scenarios
Based on the future wheel, I chose the direction of my scenarios
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Reduce the risk of a premature baby
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Artificial womb as a service that could cultivate babies for pregnant mothers
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Artificial womb as a product that could cultivate babies for pregnant mothers
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Commercial matching based on artificial womb
I made 4 scenarios and tested 18 testees In the young generation. I tested 9 for each gender.
Based on the feedback, I built my final design.
SOLUTION
Introducing you NEST
NEST was a service platform introduced by hospitals and government. The core of the service was a type of artificial womb called NEST that could cultivate baby by collecting the sperm and egg. The costumer then track the condition of the baby on the official application and use the mummy enhanced experience offered by the NEST to improve the experience of being an expectant mother.
User journey
REFLECTION
In order to get more feedback from the social level with a wider age group, I tested the old generation.
I printed my introduction for the NEST and put it on the wall, in order to get feedback. On the right, I put a message board with a scale on that people could put their stickers with their comments on the message board based on the scale. I hung out on the board for 1 week and received feedback from 20 people.
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I think this NEST is good and I will use it (7 people)
Main reasons:
- Save plenty of time for having a child
- Help families who can not give birth by themselves
- Reduce the anxiety coming from giving birth to a female
- Relieve the gender discrimination in the current society
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I think this NEST is good but I will not use it (6 people)
Main reasons:
- Can not feel the surprise of getting a baby
- Who will take responsibility if the baby gets some health problems
- Worry about the maturity of the product and its principle
- Worry about the physical and psychological health of the babies from NEST
- Worry about the potential risk of sperm and the egg such as being stolen
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I think this NEST is not good but I will not use it (7 people)
Main reasons:
- Many ethical issues are involved
- This would be too risky, the safety of the embryo can not be guaranteed
- Mother will not feel happy through the whole experience
- A baby is the pledge of love, not the production of technology
Learning and take away
My original goal was to help the crowd solve problems in the early stage. Then I gradually realized that the problem was complicated. From this project, I learnt that:
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They are getting different
By comparing two generations surveyed, we can see that young generation and old generation have significant differences. The young generation’s recognition degree for the NEST is higher than that of old generation. For the young generation, they are more concerned with the transparency of the product. So when the designer is designing a product for the young generation, it is important to build trust between each other. And when the design a product for the old generation, more attention need to paid to the emotional aspect.
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A pandora box
When the designer provide convenience value to users through technology, they must also consider whether it will have a negative impact on their emotions or family relationships from the perspective of the society. Most of people are open with purchasing products that have the same attribute as human organs. From the perspective of the product, considering the flow of a product after use is also a direction to be considered as a designer. It is not only for sustainability, but also for people’s emotional appeals.
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They are also influenced
If NEST is invented, there would be more and more kids that born with lack of family affection, which is dangerous to the society. So not only the influence on the potential users should be considered while designing a product, the influence on the people around the potential users should also be considered.
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Paper storyboard is a good tool for prototyping
I used paper cut template that I downloaded from https://experience.sap.com/designservices/resource/scenes. I used the paper character with the DIY scenes to act the user journey, which made the whole prototype more interesting. Sometimes, how the designers present the prototype is as important as the prototype itself and more vivid narrative methods can create a sense of scene better.
