Throughout the weeks of coming up and the development of a future scenario, the act of prototyping has really allowed me to weigh out the likelihood of ideas to be implemented and the various choices in determining the plausibility of an outcome.
By looking beyond the year 2040, I have decided to delve into the potential creation of an artificial womb. The choice of coming to this decision was mainly fabricated by the two interviews that I conducted previously.
The outcome of my prototype after sketching possible ideas and manifesting various prototypes resulted to the ‘Incubabytor’.
Other ideas that I came up with included a chameleon cloak or suit that reveals a desired appearance of a person, wowza glasses that creates an ideal look for the world, a gene or substance injector that enables the improvement of gene selection and a face beautifier which sculpts the face to appear more beautiful.
By looking at the positive and negative factors of the various prototype ideas, I was able to cut down the ideas to one.
This ‘Do it yourself baby oven’, which is also known as an ‘Incubabetor’ or ‘Incubaetor’, explores the idea of ectogenesis.
By looking at a traditional incubator, ‘baby boxes’ and exisiting artificial wombs for animals, I considered the various constructions and shape of the ‘Incubabytor’. As the sole purpose of the ‘Incubabytor’ is to act as an artificial womb,
The initial prototypes that I had made were in the form of a rectangle and bag. This is where the rectangular box would imitate an incubator and the bag imitating artificial wombs for animals and the idea of the stork delivering a baby to your doorstep. Continuing the research within ectogenesis, I decided to make the final ‘Incubabytor’ in the shape of a cylindrical egg shape. The reason for this is formulised from the effective purpose of the prototype.
To allow a thorough representation of the prototype, I decided to make the model deconstructable. This allowed the multiple layers of the prototype to be removed and the user to have a better understanding of the device through the senses of sight and touch.
The final purpose of ‘Incubabytor’ prototype is to allow the successful course of carrying a baby through the early stages of growth to birth. It provides a solution to women who can’t carry children, the elimination of miscarriages, equality between men and women and LGBT community. Women would also not be put under the risk of any life threatening during labour, it eliminates the pain factor during birth and they would be able to continue to work.
In order to make sure that the mother and child bond is existent throughout pregnancy and not eliminated, the dome of the prototype adopts a technology that allows a person to register their touch, voice and smell. From here, once activated through your phone, the person will be able to communicate to the growing foetus with a touch of a button. Within the device, there is a gel like agent which contracts or expands around the foetus to mimic your touch. The person will also get notifications and regular updates of the foetus, whether it’d be growth or movement.
Becker, R. 2017, An artificial womb successfully grew baby sheep — and humans could be next, The Verge, viewed 03 October 2018, <https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/25/15421734/artificial-womb-fetus-biobag-uterus-lamb-sheep-birth-premie-preterm-infant>
Beautiful is Better 