Conceptual Tools for Teaching Biodesign: The Biodesign Matrix, The Conversational Approach to Design and Material Grammars

As a field, biodesign has diverse aims, materials, processes, and outcomes. This offers potential for novel design solutions, but it can also make it difficult to introduce to undergraduate design students because there are so many aspects to cover in one course. This paper presents three conceptual tools—the Biodesign Matrix, the Conversational Approach to Design, and Material Grammars—that aim to reduce the learning curve when students engage in biodesign practices. First, the Biodesign Matrix is an analytic tool that can help students understand how past biodesign precedents function in society. It broadly categorizes biodesign projects based on two criteria: the design aims (i.e., discursive or utilitarian) and the design outcomes (i.e., conceptual outcomes, which rely on diagrams, video and interactive media, or material outcomes, which use living organisms or organic material). The second conceptual tool, the Conversational Approach to Design focuses on the design process. It emphasizes an inquisitive and process-based approach to design instead of a product-based approach. The final conceptual tool, Material Grammars, deals with the affective experiences that a user may feel when they encounter a biodesign project. The terms that make up Material Grammars are framed as oppositions (e.g., organic/synthetic, pliable/brittle, ephemeral/enduring) and can help students understand how the intrinsic qualities of a material can be transformed to create poetic and emotive experiences. Together, these three conceptual tools help provide clear, descriptive, and value-neutral terminology that can facilitate faster knowledge acquisition when students engage in biodesign practices.