Designs for Flies + of Mice and Men: Design Approaches to Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Designs for Flies is an award-winning design-led interdisciplinary project between KYOTO Design Lab (D-Lab), the Department of Applied Biology at the Kyoto Institute of Technology (KIT) and Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT), Japan. Within the framework of speculative design yet using an inclusive methodology, Frank Kolkman, a young Dutch designer, took Professor Masamitsu Yamaguchi’s climbing assay experiment with Drosophila in his genetic mapping for CMT as the point of departure. Kolkman sought to address two questions raised during his initial research: “Could alternative strategies be used to generate interest from pharmaceutical companies for obscure, complicated or ‘unmarketable’ diseases in drug research?” and “Could transgenic Drosophila be used for the wildcard testing of drug compounds directly by patients at home in the search for a possible cure?” The chapter will describe its genesis, design process and the challenges and potential of interdisciplinary projects of this nature along with the impact of the resulting concept, which incorporated service, system, product and interaction design. It won the Services and Systems category of the Dutch Design Awards (DDW) in 2016, and Kolkman was named DDW’s Young Designer of the Year in October 2017. It was followed by Of Flies, Mice and Men: drosophila and the interconnected landscape of genes, a Drosophila-related science communication project by Marcel Helmer, Kolkman’s successor as D-Lab Design Associate for which the design brief was based on issues raised by the first project. This is also described to highlight the differing issues, design approaches and results of this science/design collaboration.