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?
Introducing Printeria to the world
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 decided it was completely necessary to encourage a willing atmosphere in which Printeria could be a useful tool to approach SynBio to society in an educational, nearby and appeling way. But, how to do so?
While analyzing our potential skateholds (as it will be explained much further in our integration webpage), we had the opportunity to explore the vast applications of the BioArt world. Then, we realized we had there the perfect way to introduce SynBio and Printeria to the world:
promoting the BioArt field and so using an attractive and non-usual approach to get the public curiosity. To do so, we demonstrated Printeria artistic utilities through a Microbial Art workshop. We also collaborated with the famous valencian artist José María Yturralde, a representation of the connection between art and science. On the other hand, several open-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.
Integrating user opinion: the key to the final success
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.
Thus, our first step was to identify the real-life problems that could be solved with our device. We finally classied its target application fields as:
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Research groups. Printeria automatizes time-consuming protocols, so it enhances the intellectual task and eases the experiments reproducibility.
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Education. With a friendly-user software, Printeria is designed to be an educational tool
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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 but at the same time safe SynBio device.
In order to get first-hand feedback, our human practices team conducted several interviews with each professional group to realize which were the real user 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, one of the most important potential users. Moreover, our microfluidic system was thoughtfully developed with the advice of electronic engineering professionals from the microfluidic area.
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 and how it was integrated to finally create Printeria as nowadays is, you can further read clicking here.
Biosafety
Biosafety measurements are completely necessary during any lab research. Moreover, considerations in relation to Printeria sterilization and biocontention measurements are 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.