Product Design Jam

because its illegal to NOT do it, makes it ever mooore creepy

I’m imagining a range of options for single parents who want to have a baby. First, they select the egg and sperm they want to use to create the embryo, or use one of their own if they have sent in a specimen. They can read the bios of the donors with some details redacted.

Then they wait for the embryo to be harvested in the lab, whereupon they receive a list of identified genetic defects and modifications that can be made. It might be like selecting items from a menu but that the menu is dependent upon the outcome of the DNA in the embryo.

Once the embryo reaches a certain stage, it can be sent via courier to the customer’s local insemination center for them to have it implanted in themselves (if they are female), or they could choose to have a surrogate service provided by the company.

Surrogates could be human or artificial wombs, depending upon whether you are old school or happy to use the latest in laboratory womb technology.

In the UK, there is an expression, “Too posh to push”, which means that wealthier women choose to have Caesarian section deliveries so that they don’t have to go through all the uncertainty and pain associated with natural birth (they simply get an epidural). This BaB service takes this a whole step further in that you don’t have to birth your own baby at all.

You get to pick the character and personality traits you want, perhaps on a sliding scale:

  • strength
  • aggression
  • intelligence
  • pain threshold
  • obedience
  • artistic abilities (could be many different ones here)

Mods:

  • night vision
  • expanded sensory perception (auditory, oral, olfactory, etc)

There might be interactions between the traits so that you can’t simply choose to go all the way in everything you like. Also, you are probably limited to the DNA that you end up with whenever you get an embryo; there’s still an element of chance.

Think of those sweet bags or collectible dolls wherein you don’t know what’s inside (mystery bags, boxes, etc). That’s what getting an embryo is like; you don’t really know what the DNA will allow until it’s formed. Then, you need to make a decision.

The site might run promotions in which government agencies and other interested parties will offer you cash back if you choose certain character traits for your baby. In other words, they are practicing social engineering by making sure that some people select underserved character traits to round out and improve the population.

This is a safe-guard against people all choosing the same attributes and ending up with too many ‘similar’ people.

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Would surrogacy option be a premium than Caesarian since it didn’t involve the parent’s pregnancy? Single Male parent or gays would find this useful too since they can’t conceive.

Single parent story reminds me of Dr Slump’s plot where a scientist created a “perfect little girl robot” but faced challenges in adapting with society, in humourous way. That said, we need to decide on what genre will this website be so we can paint the tone of message and the perspective that we are portraying for our BaB centre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Slump

Imagine the promotions is some weird freaky things. For example they might be giving out free waranty for 10 year and if the baby died then they get a clone for free.

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Organic robots!

I can see we are leaning towards a direction of treating baby as a commercial product instead of a human being

Ohh…that clears up our prev jam thoughts and possibilities of having too many “Justin Bieber clones” and facing inbreeding prob

An evacuation plan for creators to abandon babies when they wrongly make customisations, so that they’re not stuck with the baby for life

you mean a

War-anti?

Organic Robot =Transformers? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

“Behind the Chinese trial also lies some bold thinking about how evolution can be shaped by science.” - MIT review

The fact that One Child Policy is said to be created by a man named Song Jian missile scientist who also studies Cybernetics that deals with structure and relationship between humans, animals and machines…this fact itself, makes a very compelling backstory and elements that we can add to the website

At the moment, I am imagining something headquartered in China with lots of color and animations, sort of cutesy and inspired by Japanese Manga. This would be in order to make it as accessible as possible to a wide audience without frightening the public. Of course, this would achieve the opposite - it would be extremely disturbing because it is so oddly divorced from reality… but takes itself seriously.

For some reason, I imagine color schemes and artwork similar to the Japanese artist, Takeshi Murakami, who does these hyperactive manga characters with very dark themes in an overly joyful manner.

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I see a number of ideas here that we can take forward. So, could you guys “favourite :heart:” the comments which you think can be brought forward for the next phase.

So each person gets to favourite a maximum of only 3 comments.

How about this,

Takashi Murukami, the artist with signature flowery motif?

If we’re heading to that direction, we can add to that with hint of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (Japanese avant garde, kawaii style singer) and Yayoi Kusama (minimalist, pop art). Just few additional ideas to add into Murukami.

Would ‘cute’ elements repell the potential social science audience (ie: serious Male geeks) or are we targeting our users to appeal to the mass?

Creepy website with lots of “I have an Angelic dreams…” cringey goosebumps

We will be having a lunch break now

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