SynFlo: tangible synthetic-biology exhibit
ACM TEI '16 paper and Tech Interactive installation exploring tangible interaction for synthetic-biology learning.
What it is. A tangible-museum-exhibit study and ACM TEI ‘16 paper on novice-friendly interaction patterns for early synthetic-biology concepts. Designed and published by Johanna Okerlund and others in Orit Shaer’s HCI Lab at Wellesley, built into the BioDesign Studio program at The Tech Interactive. I am co-author on the Tech Interactive partner side.
The problem behind it. BacPack had shown that visitors could engage with synthetic-biology design grammar through tangibles. SynFlo asked the more novice-side question: what is the right entry point for someone who has never seen biology framed this way at all? The answer turned out to be substantially simpler interaction patterns, with most of the design effort going into the first thirty seconds of the encounter.
What I did. Same shape of partnership as BacPack: Wellesley led the academic side, the Tech Interactive ran the museum-floor side. My slice was making sure the SynFlo unit fit alongside the rest of the BioDesign Studio programming and that the visitor flow worked. The ACM TEI ‘16 paper documents the interaction-design research; the museum installation documents what the academic methodology looks like at scale.
Publications
- Okerlund, J., Segreto, E., Grote, C., Westendorf, L., Scholze, A., Littrell, R., & Shaer, O. (2016). SynFlo: A tangible museum exhibit for exploring bio-design. *Proceedings of TEI '16*, 141–149. ACM. — DOI · Open-access PDF (Wellesley HCI Lab)
Collaborators
- Wellesley HCI Lab — Orit Shaer (lead PI); Johanna Okerlund, Emily Segreto, Caroline Grote, Lauren Westendorf — academic authors
- The Tech Interactive — exhibition partner; Anja Scholze, PhD (co-curator)
Press and references
Related projects
- 2013–2017
BioDesign Studio
$5M permanent exhibition on synthetic biology, with a working biological design lab on the museum floor, tangible-tabletop microbe simulators, live cell-culture stations, and visitor-runnable design tools.
- 2016–2017
BacPack: tangibles for biology learning
Two ACM-published research papers on the role of tangible interaction in a museum exhibit for synthetic biology. Built into the BioDesign Studio installation at The Tech Interactive.