Fermenting Design Workshops

“Fermenting Design” Workshop (since 2022)

Ferment Media Research (Dominique Chen, Youngash Seong, Kazuhiro Jo)

　Since 2022, with the support of DMN, we have held two public design workshops to put into practice “fermentation-based design,” a concept inspired by our design research on Nukabot. In these workshops, participants actually cultivate fermented foods while together exploring the question, “How can we design products that undergo unpredictable transformations as they interact with people and their environments?” I reported insights collected through this project at the Sustainable Unmaking Workshop at CHI’24. A third workshop is planned for 2025.

Final presentation of Fermenting Desks

Fermenting Windows (bottom)

First meeting: participants prepare their own nukadoko to have a bodily understanding of fermentation.

Second meeting: participants brought their nukadokos they had taken care of for 2 weeks, and felt the differences of odor, color, touch and taste.

Participants discussed about how to incorporate the evolving aspect of fermentation to their targeted products.

Presentation of Fermenting Desk: participants created various valuable questions through their prototyping.