Keywords: sustainability, culture of care, rituality, non-anthropocentric, symbiosis, prototyping, object design, UX workshops, co-creation, human-object-nature trifecta, scoby, empowering technology

In continuation of my membership in the Other Future Pasts design collective, we moved onto a material project. Jarassic Fermentor Master 2035 is a result of symbiosis of the human-object-nature trifecta, present through light and growing scoby during and after each ritual of making and fermenting. This ritual around your own food and feed reveals the invisible relationships between various organic matters, its needs and the use of technology in empowering to do so. Furthermore, the ritual of making kombucha opens up belonging to a wider community of fermenting and to be part of a culture of care.

First functioning prototype

In our final iteration, we created the first functioning prototype of the Jarrassic Fermentor Master 2035. Thanks to a microcontroller in the base of the Fermentor Master 2035, a PH meter and addressable lights, we can follow the fermentation of Kombucha process in real-time. The more acidic the Kombucha, the redder the light shining from the base into the jar. Using technology, we emphasise symbiotic relationships between yeast and bacteria, pulling into awareness non-anthropocentric specie in a domestic context.

Users and stakeholders

Users: Young to middle-aged adults and their respective households trying to transition into more sustainable thinking.

Stakeholders: Organic micro-organisms of kombucha such as yeast, technology, our ecosystems, sustainable communities, home decor producers.

UX Research: Discovery and empathy workshop

Our team lead co-creative workshop with non-designers to identify the current state of posthuman specie relationships. Including a mixed demographic of potential users both pre- and post-transition into more sustainable lifestyles would allow us to prioritise all user needs before we started on our design solution. It also helped us identify a democratically understandable storytelling for the Jarassic Fermentor Master 2035 and reveal several requirements for interspecies communication.