User Research

OVERVIEW

This summer, the Wellesley College iGem team worked with many potential users of our projects to create tools that improved synthetic biology education or improved efficiency and collaboration in the context of synthetic biology research. We spoke to many potential users, from researchers heading labs in synthetic biology research to users in industry and college students studying biological sciences. We conducted user studies of our programs with volunteer subjects from the MIT and BU iGEM teams as well as students from Wellesley College who had a range of knowledge and exposure to synthetic biology. Receiving feedback from both target and non-target users during the design process is a vital part of the project design process, especially since we are focused on a user-centered design (UCD) process. We valued all input from the people we collaborated or interacted with during user testing.

BASIC WET-LAB TRAINING WITH NATALIE KULDELL AT MIT

At the beginning of the summer, the Wellesley Desyne team received an introduction to synthetic biology and wet-lab training by Professor Natalie Kuldell at MIT. After reviewing the core concepts of synthetic biology, we also discussed in detail the safety concerns of working in this multi-disciplinary field. During the wet-lab training, we were able to participate first hand on well-known and highly regarded experiments such as E.chromi. Through this experience, our team realized that several factors could strongly affect the success or failure of a synthetic biology experiment: labeling equipment properly, meticulously following clearly written instructions, and communicating with other team members. In addition, we discovered that there are many technical difficulties of working in a laboratory environment, especially for those who are nonscientists. Most importantly, there are many safety concerns that are not understood or well known to the public because of synthetic biology’s recent emergence as a leading field. Thus, we realized the importance of educating the public, especially the next generation of synthetic biologists, on the safety concerns of working in a wet-lab environment, and put those considerations into many of our projects.

BRAINSTORMING AND COLLABORATION WITH BU

We continued our tradition of collaborating with the BU iGem team. We had a major brainstorming session with BU at the beginning of the summer where the teams introduced their projects to each other. We received basic feedback and brainstormed for initial goals for our three projects: Eugenie, zMol_zTree, and Bac To The Future. Eugenie in particular benefitted immensely from the initial brainstorming because we wanted to learn about the Eugene We also brainstormed We also scheduled

SITTING IN ON BU LAB MEETINGS

A few times this summer, members of the team sat in on BU iGem lab meetings to observe how From Eu

NEXT STEPS TO TAKE IN THE UCD PROCESS

While we made progress in great leaps and bounds this summer, we are aware that there is still work to be done to continue to develop our projects past the scope of iGem.