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Design Lab: Family Futures

Three young women sitting at a table together working on what appears to be a circuit board.
A "Make the Breast Pump Not Suck" Hackathon, hosted at the MIT Media Lab. Photo by Ken Richardson.

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In 2018, the MIT design collaborative Make the Breast Pump Not Suck (MBPNS) led a summit convening more than 250 collaborators to address “better products, programs, policies, and systems to support breastfeeding and pumping with a focus on equity,” with the first hackathon of its kind. Alexis Hope, artist, designer, researcher, and creative director of MBPNS, leads this virtual collaborative design workshop exploring issues around motherhood and maternity. Learn about ways design methods can be applied to motherhood in an interactive workshop hosted by one of the designers featured in Designs for Different Futures.

Alexis Hope is a designer and researcher based at the MIT Media Lab, MIT Center for Civic Media, and the Massachusetts College of Art department of Industrial Design. As part of her work at MIT, she developed FOLD, an open publishing platform that helps people and organizations tell complex stories in a visually striking way. As part of her commitment to participatory design, Hope helps organize unique hackathons and civic technology workshops around the world.

“Mothers and parents need time, support, and love from their communities to give their babies the best possible start in life. We purposely work to legitimize breastfeeding innovation in research, design and policy interventions. We also connect different stakeholders in the system around a common desire to create healthier communities. We believe that parents are imaginative and creative, and we want to adopt that same spirit in our multidisciplinary approach.” —Make the Breast Pump Not Suck

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