Team:Shanghaitech/Background

Background

Introduction

To get to know the current status of Bio-design, we did both quantitative (questionnaire survey) and qualitative (deep interview) researches. The results indicate that:

  1. Both the bio-designers and students have interesting thoughts in bio-designing. However, they could not realize them due to lack of lab experience.
  2. The best way to preserve inspiration and innovation is to practice right away.
  3. A lab-free synthetic biology platform, would greatly benefit the public in preserving bio-innovative ability.

Questionnaires

We received 252 questionnaire results from people with various backgrounds, indicating that:

  1. Most of the interviewees are fascinated by bioproducts production or once had ideas of inventing one.

  2. The public are curious but ignorant about synthetic biology.

  3. Bio-lovers cannot realized their designs because of lack of lab experience.

  4. The public regard a lab-free synthetic biology tool as the best way to popularize synthetic biology.

Interview

We interviewed 2 innovation groups, 4 makers, and 12 students aging from 14 to 22, and got a perceptual knowledge. In addition, we communicated with 2 instructors and a scholar in innovation education to get their opinions on modern development and application of bio-related products and their experience in education of this area.


Most of the bio-lovers, no matter students or makers, once had outstanding bio-product designs, they became very excited. We can feel the thirsty and curiosity through just looking at the eyes of teenagers during our workshop. For makers and designers, bio-design is a promising direction since currently there is an increasing demand for products with the sense of vitality. However, due to the high bar of biotech practice, they could hardly turn their curiosity into practice.


The instructors gave us detailed educating methods about cultivating bio-creativity. The concept of these methods can be summarized as a simple phrase, ‘to practice’. “Creativity can be developed and enhanced through practice. However, most schools do the opposite. They stifle creativity by rote learning and stereotyped testing. Every child is born as an artist. The problem is how to protect and cherish it while growing up.” said by Edward Bilous, a scholar in creative intelligence. This encouraged us to develop MagicBlock, to lower the bar for practicing synthetic biology for biologists and also for non-biology major bio-lovers.


Interviewees

  1. Bio-lover (Junior high students)

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  2. Bio-lover (Non-biology major college students)

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  3. Bio-lover

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  4. Instructors

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Documents

1. Bio-lover (Junior high students)














































































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2. Bio-lover (Non-biology major college students)























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3. Bio-lover (Makers)

































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4. Instructors























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