Bio-organic breast pump

'Fluenci' is an outstanding design project, where the underlying design philosophy, project approach, and design results are all very innovative and beautiful. The project was performed in 2010 by Jaap Knoester as part of his master graduation from Eindhoven University of Technology, and  in collaboration with Philips Design.

The vision of the project was to create a new type of breast feeding pump, that fits the intimate experience better than current models, which feel very mechanical and functional. Several interviews were done with mothers which showed that current breast pumps often make them feel exposed, or even felt degrading. It was also found that the so-called 'let-down' reflex, which triggers the milk flow, is stimulated the most when the mother can see, hear, smell and feel the warmth of her baby.

These stimuli are incorporated into the design of the Fluenci breast pump through a heated breastshield with electric thermofoils, an organic form that resembles the back of the baby's head and neck and allows for cradling, as well as sounds of the baby played by the remote pump unit. Because milk flow is most stimulated when suckling starts out fast and then slows down, this behavior was also incorporated into the breast pump. The device has a button on top which the mother can tap in order to adjust the suckling frequency.

User tests showed that this interaction for adjusting the suckling frequency should be more direct and precise. While a subtle and direct interaction such as the suggested tapping might seem beautiful, I think that the main reason it is not preferred over, say, a slider or control knob, is that it needs too much conscious attention from the user. It requires a felt connection to the device, in other words, the user needs to mentally get into a rhythm and then convey this rhythm in an embodied way. But such a felt connection is subordinate to the felt connection with the baby. A baby's suckling can obviously not be controlled by tapping on his or her head, so it is necessarily a non-anthropomorphic element, and probably it is best to design it as such - as part of the technical device, not the intimate experience. In this case it is probably best to leave the age-old ritual of breastfeeding alone and minimize other subrituals in terms of cognitive and physical load.

Overall, the test subjects much appreciated the device. Knoester explains in a paper written for the DeSForM 2012 conference called 'Fluenci: The expression of expressing' that the underlying design philosophy responsible for the success is based on a new type of anthropomorphic design that does not fit well into current classifications of anthropomorphic design, because it does not fully mimic human form, gesture, social roles or intentionality. Rather, it is more subtly designed with human qualities so that the user can interact with the device as if it were human. Knoester calls this Embodied Anthropomorphic Form.

Now, I think we need to pay some attention to this, because to me it is an extremely beautiful and powerful way to design products. It avoids the uncanny valley by not directly mimicking existing biological forms, and it avoids a too technical, robotic, distant look. I think that deep down, it is exactly where humans want to be in terms of interacting with their technological environment, and that it can dissolve such widespread modern-day feelings of alienation and dissociation. I think that we need to extend this approach into a design approach that can be used for all products, not just ones simulating human to human interaction. We need to learn to design products so that humans are invited to interact with them as if they were sentient beings in general, imbued with the same cosmic life force, you could say, that we humans feel. Then technological products would not feel distant and complex anymore, but we can accept their complexity because we feel the same life in them as we feel inside of us, so on a more basic level there would be a feeling of equality which can them give rise to empathy, acceptance, understanding, even love or oneness.

In the past, I have quite casually suggested the term 'biological modernism' for this design approach, because I believe that we should design according to modernist principles but now extended not just to minimize and beautify static qualities such as form and proportion, but also dynamic, alive qualities of interaction. I think though, that modernistic design could be more like a subclass of this kind of biological design, because it would allow people to also be less minimal (or even extremely extravagant) in case they prefer such an approach. It's just that personally I would advocate minimalism because it forces designers to use their creativity and intellect more fully in order to condense a lot of complexity into elegant design solutions, and this to me is what creates beauty. But of course nature does also not always seem very intelligent, and often extremely messy. The notions that nature is wild, nasty and chaotic on the one hand, and mind-blowingly beautiful on the other hand, are two opposite images and as always, neither is fully true. So now I would like to suggest a new approach, in the broadest sense based on encapsulating the biological lifeforce in technological devices, not just in terms of form such as organic designers such as Luigi Colani and Ross Lovegrove have been doing with their corresponding design philosophies of 'Biodesign' and 'Organic Essentialism', but extending this also towards the embodied relation with human beings. Therefore I would like to suggest the term 'Embodied Biodesign'. In case this sets you thinking and you come up with a better name, suggestions are welcome!

Digital skins and Body atmospheres

I knew they had the idea going for a while already, but finally they've released some work. Fashion designer Nancy Tilbury, in collaboration with Philips Design, have created a movie about the future of fashion for 2050. I love how they present their work about the cyborgization of the human body almost as a new religion of aesthetics. Their ideas include - I hope I get this right - :

- Fashion becomes an atmospherical experience, as if your skin becomes part of your natural environment. Think gaseous and liquid rather than solid.

- Fashion will become digital, but not in a push button type of way. Technology around the body becomes organically sensitive, speaking to our visceral rather than our social or our reflective minds. This is possible through the ethereal qualities that nanotechnology will allow us to develop. Think interacting by sensually touching your skin, or swallowing certain tokens.

- Digital cosmetics will be big business. Think on-the-fly modifiable irises and fingernails.

- We will be able to influence the 'natural' growth of our human body. Think growing your own shoes, jewelry and even your garments directly onto your body.





Watch the movie clip here:

Digital Skins Body Atmospheres from Nancy Tilbury on Vimeo.

Philips brings natural behavior back inside the home

We view nature as being outside, instead of inside our homes. Our houses are basically meant to take us away from the perils and unpredictabilities of the natural environment. The design team at Philips Design's Probes department challenges this ingrained assumption, and in their latest project "metamorphosis" brings the good and beautiful elements of nature back into our homes.

Their design work includes a series of technological objects that channel sensory patterns from the outside of the home to the inside. A few of these objects include technology that physically adapts itself according to conscious or unconscious user interactions. For example, there is the bed that adapts itself to the posture of the person using it, and there is the wall that can reshape itself by bulging and straightening its flexible elements. Other concepts show behavior that feels naturally through other sensory modalities, such as a structures that direct light through fiber optics elements in order to nourish plants, give rise to a certain mood, or have a healing effect on the human body.

The designers - undoubtedly involving Bart Hess and Lucy McRae - have also created a movie that shows the collection of objects in a wonderfully playful and dynamic way. So make sure not to miss that either:

ecological city lights

At my time at Philips Design I witnessed the development of these sustainable city lights, which to me still is a brilliant concept that should be realized soon. It would definitely be a milestone towards an interconnected techno-ecological society.

The concept behind these elegant structures that almost look as if they came from the land of Pandora is this: during the daytime, the petals open up like a flower and position themselves such to collect as much sunlight as possible. In case of a cloudy, windy day, they position themselves in order to catch the wind and start rotating to generate electricity, which can then be fed back into the grid. The energy flow is visualized on the outside of the stem through LED lights. At night, the petals close and start to light up the city.

This concept fits so nicely into holistic thinking for several reasons:
- it gives us more shadow during the day, which reduces global warming
- warmth is largely converted into light, serving a basic human need
- electricity is saved by using LED lights
- the structure is continuously adaptive, which optimizes the efficiency
- the aesthetics of form and movement remind us almost of a biological organism, which slowly suffuses us with the mindset that our technological environment can come alive