A Future Projected from Today’s Scientific Discoveries

Today, alternative parents are becoming more common—couples who are same-sex or older, and individuals choosing to have children on their own. These alternative parents rely on adoption, donors, surrogates, and IVF, which can be expensive, tedious, risky, and emotionally draining, not to mention resulting in a child that might not have their DNA.

At the same time, researchers today have discovered ways to create sperms and eggs directly from pluri-potent stem cells from skin cells in mice. Other scientists have built an artificial womb for the last weeks for a baby lamb. These discoveries suggest a future where human babies can also be created artificially outside the body.

Grounded in today’s latest scientific research, this project aims to design an optimal experience for parents in the year 2052. In the process, many questions were raised:

• As designers, how can we design a human-centered experience that would humanize the process of artificial conception and gestation?  
• What would daily life be like with an artificial womb?
• What are the ethic concerns around artifical procreation?
• Who can you have children with? How would people choose their partners (or have partners at all) if sex is no longer required?
• Who is allowed or has access to artificial procreation technologies?  Who gets to decide who is a suitable parent or not?
• What regulations and laws would be required to ensure ethical use of these new technologies?
• How might gender roles change?

In Vitro Gametogenesis (IVG)

IVG is a new artificial conception method. Taking pluripotent stem cells found in the basal layer of the skin, doctors can program these cells to become sperms or eggs.

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Ex vivo Uterine Environment (EVE)

EVE is a new assisted gestation service. It is an artificial external womb that carries a baby for the entire 9 months of gestation. A uterine organoid can be grown using a parent’s pluripotent stem cell from the skin, which is then inserted into the EVE to provide oxygen, nutrients, water, and waste removal.

How Eve Works

EVE contains an uterine organoid grown from a parent’s pluripotent stem cell and organic components such as the placenta, amniotic sac, and amniotic fluids. Utilities are hooked up to organoid to provide nutrients, oxygen, waste elimination, and heating, as well as other sensors. The womb is encased in a semi-soft membrane that allows the parent and baby to communicate through touch, light, and sounds.

EVE Product Suite

Mobile Apps for Parents & Doctors

The parents mobile app allows them to monitor the baby and be alerted when necessary. The doctors tablet app gives them medical updates on the fetus so he/she can adjust functions remotely.

Beyond Speculative Design

Although this is a speculative design project, we identified potential design products for today. Two ideas that came out of this project were to design a better incubator experience for premature babies, and to design a communication system for international surrogate parents and their babies.

Experts interviewed

• Dr. Henry Greeley
  Professor of Law and (by courtesy) Genetics Chair, Steering Committee of the Center for Biomedical Ethics
  Stanford University

• MR. Julian Norman-Taylor
  Consultant in Gynecology and Reproductive Medicine
  Chelsea Westminster Hospital

• Dr. Azim Surani
  Director of Germline and Epigenomics Research
  The Gordon Institute, University of Cambridge

• Dr. Marta Shahbazi
  Postdoctoral Scientist
  Mammalian Embryo and Stem Cell Group
  University of Cambridge

• Dr. Julia Wenegrat
  Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
  Pacific Anxiety Group

• Jenny & Eiki Tanaka, Zach Rose, Sharon & Roma Hung
  Parents that have conceived naturally, through donor, IVF, and surrogate.