Communication

Why is Communication our theme for Human Practices?

As a foundational technology, PixCell has the potential to substantially impact our society. When computers were first connected in a network, it eventually led to the creation of the internet. Who could have predicted these events wide-reaching effects on society, both positive and negative? Analogously, predicting all possible effects of our technology is equally challenging, electrical-biological interfaces open up a totally new realm of possibilities.

Throughout our project, the goal was to engage with all stakeholders as early as possible and to integrate their feedback into PixCell. This upstream engagement is especially important for foundational projects such as PixCell - an overview of how the feedback from our stakeholders shifted the direction of our project is provided in our project flowchart.

Our project revolves around an interface between life and machines - we created a means for which machines can communicate with life. Communication also lays at the heart of our Human Practices strategy - effective communication is key in both Integrated Human Practices and Outreach and Public engagement. Hence the choice of communication as our Human Practices theme.

This year, we present two pieces of original work relating to commmunications that we have applied extensively for both Integrated Human Practices as well as for Outreach. First of all, we created a Communications Strategy Guide to streamline and optimize communication. Secondly, we created a team-communication app that allows us to better discuss sensitive issues that may affect our team.

Communications Strategy Guide

As previously mentioned, finding applications and potential implementing our project was a huge problem. This problem with regard to outreach was two-fold. Firstly, we did not know what our technology could even do and as audiences tend to be interested in solid applications that could change their lives, we could not advertise our technology as something that could immediately transform their lives; another hook was needed. Secondly, since our audience is inherently less interested in our project, this exacerbates our problem of finding applications by communicating with the public.

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