Team:Valencia UPV/Human Practices
Human Practices
Science and technology have always been prompted by a desire of solving social issues. Thus, science would be nothing if it doesn’t exist a relationship with people.
How your project affects the world and how the world affects it?
Integrated Human: the key
When creating a new scientific device, the existence of political, economic and social frameworks leads into the necessity of an in-depth analysis of how your creation would affect the world and how the world affects it.
The first step was to identify the real-life problems that could be solved with the introduction of Printeria among society. To do so, we considered its target application as:
-
Research groups. Printeria automatizes time-consuming protocols, so it enhances the intellectual task and eases the experiments reproducibility.
-
Education. With a friendly-user software Printeria is designed to be an educational tool, as a fully equipped device avoids the necessity of high-cost technologies.
-
Bio Art. Printeria offers a compact and friendly toolkit to have a complete palette of pigmented bacteria for the bioartist disposal.
Thus, one of our main concerns was how to fulfill the potential stakeholders demands. Following our interdisciplinary spirit, we searched for continuos input from professionals with different backgrounds, so we could ensure we were designing a useful and safe SynBio device.
In order to get first-hand feedback, our human practices team conducted several interviews with each professional group, so we could realize which were the real necessities in relation to topics such as software functionalities, external design and safety measurements. We also received feedback from an open-talk with high school students, another potential users. Moreover, our microfluidic system was thoughtfully developed with the advice of electronic engineering professionals from the microfluidic niche.
However, we realized such a great amount of information needed to be classified previously to its integration. Thus, we decided to introduce the Kano model, a theory for product development and customer satisfaction, to grade Printeria potential improvements.
To know how the feedback receiving was focused (market niches selection) and how it was integrated (interviewers advices and Kano model implementation) to finally create Printeria as nowadays is, you can further read by clicking here.
Is our work good enough for the world?
Public Engagement: communicating in an innovative way
Printeria was born with the aim of knocking down the barriers that prevent people from coming into Synthetic Biology. However, these barriers are not only related with the high-cost technology, but also with the society lack of awareness. The lay-public do not usually know what SynBio and, when having heard about it, several misconceptions are commonly extended.
Thus, we realized it was necessary to encourage a critical thinking atmosphere before integrating Printeria. In this context, our main concern was to introduce an attractive and non-usual approach to become SynBio a closer and familiar concept. We set the goal of promoting the BioArt field, not only easing the bioartistic productions with Printeria, but also and most important introducing this art branch to the society. To do so, we decided to carry out a Microbial Art workshop, and we also collaborated with the famous valencian artist José María Yturralde. On the other hand, several talks were given to divulge SynBio and so fight against common misinformation.
See the full activities carried out in our a Education and Public Engagement page.
Biosafety
Biosafety measurements are completely necessary during any lab research. Moreover, considerations in relation to Printeria sterilization and biocontention measurements is essential if we want to introduce a bio-engineering device as Printeria is in non-scientific places.
Thus, you can read the biosafety measurements we have implemented in our device by going to the Safety page.
Collaborations
Synthetic biology builds are the result of collaborations across many fields, including institutional, industrial, scientific, and technical developments (1). In the same way, sharing and collaborating are some of the core values of the iGEM community.
We were delighted to part of this collaborative approach, so you can all read the collaborations we have made with other iGEM teams by going to our Collaborations page.
References
(1) Committee on Science, Technology, and Law; Policy and Global Affairs; Board on Life Sciences; Division on Earth and Life Sciences; National Academy of Engineering; National Research Council. Positioning Synthetic Biology to Meet the Challenges of the 21st Century: Summary Report of a Six Academies Symposium Series. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2013 Aug 5. 2, Synthetic Biology: Science and Technology for the New Millennium.