Abstract

With the integration of biotechnology into design practices (biodesign), designers are learning to navigate between the interfaces of design and science. However, for designers, the laboratory often remains an unfamiliar environment: structured, procedural, and often perceived as incompatible with creative practice. This study attempts to demystify laboratory practice and explores how laboratory practice can function as a creative methodology for designers through the reflection of the primary author’s journey from designer to designer-scientist with an autoethnographic exploration of bacterial cellulose. Conducted within a chemistry laboratory, this study investigates how scientific protocols, tools, and material characterization techniques can inform design decisions and expand material design for designers. The findings show that engaging with laboratory methodologies allow designers to think through materials by observing transformation at both aesthetic and molecular levels, linking empirical data to creative decision making. Reflecting on moments of uncertainty, adaption and learning, this study illustrates how laboratory practice reshapes the designer’s practice and identity, fostering confidence and fluency across disciplinary boundaries. Ultimately, this study argues that the act of “becoming a designer-scientist” reframes biodesign as both an empirical and reflective practice, while opening new pathways for sustainable and transdisciplinary futures.

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