PersonaCare
Introduction
In this critical speculative design project, we explore a speculative future of human life under the trend of advanced genetic systems. Such a system can understand a person’s DNA to monitor the health status and evaluate the risks of diseases with powerful AI. With the system generally adopted by the government and society, maintaining healthy means keeping competitive and thus becomes an obligation to future humans. Under the future vision, we tell a satirical story of how the speculative system reshapes a person’s life in both positive and negative ways.
The trend to explore
Nowadays, the tech giants track personal information via the internet to understand the consumers, to either provide a better user experience or target ads on them. In the healthcare domain, we also see a trend that our bodies’ information is collected to power big data and improve the healthcare experience. New devices and interactions are invented to understand our bodies via genetic testing and DNA fingerprints. In the future, such products will further advance, getting more accessible and widespread, impacting our society just like the internet today. We would like to explore the trend in this project, how it will change human life and culture, as well as challenges to human rights and personal data privacy.
Why the trend is interesting and relevant to design and society?
As biometric science and technologies advance further, we see a trend that new devices are invented to interact with humans in novel ways. For example, we can get our saliva collected by 23andMe to understand our DNA and thus pay more attention to Genetic disease. On the other hand, it is hard to control what the company can do with the DNA collected. They can enrich their database to make their reports more accurate, but can also sell the DNA data to 3rd-party for a profit. There can also be massive privacy concerns — there is nothing more private to us than our genetic data, which is unique to a person and can identify the person.
Owning and manipulating the personal data of millions of users can always raise privacy concerns. Nowadays, the most outstanding examples are that tech giants track users’ internet browsing activities and target ads on consumers. Facebook and Google make 98% and 70% of their total revenue respectively based on accurate ads. Maternity supplies ads are sent to
a teenage girl based on her web browsing history, surprising her own father who does not know about her pregnancy. The privacy-concerning trend is, however, almost irresistible given the amount of revenue behind this business model.
In the future, under the trend of advanced biometric technologies interweaved with our personal life, the interaction and connectivity between humans and devices will be redefined. There will be giant companies in the biometrics industry just like today’s internet giants. Imagine they own the same amount of data as Facebook, but the data is our genetic identifications. The consequence of hacking will be much more severe compared to stolen credit card numbers. If some hacker got a copy of your DNA, you cannot just replace your own DNA like replacing a credit card, and the hacker may even clone another you if such technology is enabled. There will be more significant social implications with DNA data collected by other organizations, as we will show details in the Future Vision section.
Future Vision
In the future, biometric technologies, especially genetic technologies will advance to greatly improve healthcare and the quality of human lives. There will be new products and devices that people can use to understand and monitor their health at the micro and genetic level. The NDA can be collected and explained instantly. Just like computers used to be only for professionals but now everywhere in our families, healthcare products will become much more affordable, handy, and easy to use. The products will be used by individuals in the family or public areas and can track every aspect of their daily lives including people’s intake, body conditions, and even excrement. Some products can help catch diseases at their very early stage or when babies are born, and other products can help control the risk of such diseases developing during one’s lifetime.
Such a system will go viral due to three major reasons. Firstly, the clinical data and user experience have proved that the system will not only predict diseases but also provide practical solutions, such as medications fitting one’s DNA. Statistic metrics also show that such a system can prolong human life by 10% on average. Secondly, hospitals and health insurance trust and collaborate with the system. One can pay less health insurance if the system predicts less chance to get the deadly disease and the system can instruct the user to prevent it. Thirdly, corporations and society will also put trust in such a system, since it can optimize the talents working on key roles based on their genetic health. For example, when a person looks for a spouse, or a company hires a key leadership role, the genetic data system will be referred to. It would be unfair to people with bad health conditions or imperfect DNA. However, society is always in favor of greater benefits — a family can bore a healthy baby, a team can have a leader with a sound mental and physical condition — instead of several unlucky ones losing their chances at their early life.
With many people using the system, their genetic and health monitoring data are also owned by biometric giant corporations, and they are even bigger than today’s Google or Facebook. With the amount of data, for the first time in human history, an organization could have insight into almost every individual’s living condition at once. AI is being built on top of such data insight to better understand the problems and provide suggestions. Such AI is so powerful in disease prediction and prevention, in a further step making humans followers and believers of these healthcare products. How will our culture be reshaped by the system and what will happen in such a society? You will see examples in later storyboards.
Manifesto
(A manifesto from PersonaCare in 2050 when they released next-generation healthcare products for family use)
For the past two decades, our breakthroughs in genetic testing have let us
understand human health from its root — the piece of genetic code that defines the body. By understanding the relationship between the gene and human health, we aim to improve the overall health of human beings by various means from health risk control to disease prediction. On the other hand, the society also realized the importance of DNA and proactively embraces the value brought by genetic testing. As a milestone last year, DNA evaluation has become a major factor impacting the price of everyone’s health insurance.
In response to this trend, we have developed a genetic-based health management assistant system that every family can easily own. As the core mission of PersonaCare, we aim to create the best health plan for your daily life by understanding every piece of information about your body. From cups to toiletries, our products cover every part of your personal life to monitor your health, provide professional care, and prolong your life. By simply owning the products, you will get an average of 20% off of your current health insurance plan. With our popular brand across the globe, our expertise is powered by the biggest data of human beings, assisting government agencies and health centers to provide better health protection and services to the public. We care about the health of every family, and data-based healthy living starts from here. Our goal is to improve human health and bring a health-aware community for all.
Speculative System
Cup, Pillow, and Toilet constitute the health monitoring and management
system. The health monitoring report will be generated by a centralized system integrating the input and output of these products. The government and organizations will refer to such reports to plan on societal benefits, make decisions on talent seeking and recruiting, or build professional social networks.
- Smart Cup
- Smart Pillow
- Smart Toilet
Scenarios
- Scenarios One
This year, the government began a “health assistance program” that provides incentives to people after the age of forty if they meet the criteria for a health assessment. This news made George very anxious, as he turned forty this year, but he was unable to apply for the subsidy because of a variety of physical illnesses, plus his family history of cancer, which made him a high-risk individual. But then he came across the Smart Cup as a health management product, which claimed to help improve user’s health to meet the requirements of formal health assessment.
When he drank with the cup, the sensor instantly collected his cell from his lip and interpreted his DNA information. It also checked other health status based on his saliva. Then the info was compiled into a health report sent to his computer. As he expected, the result showed a risk of fatal diseases. He ended up spending a lot of money on various medications and therapeutic products based on the recommendations of the health management system linked by his Smart Cup report. After taking the medications, the smart cup showed the fatal disease risk had been lowered, and he soon became eligible for health assistance.
However, he was troubled as to why his risk of illness was reduced so quickly after he bought the medications. Is this some kind of deal between the company and the government? By having him pay attention to the health risk, the policy motivated him to buy the Smart Cup, which turned the risk into concrete reports and medication solutions. They understand the more you value your health, the more you pay for it.
- Scenarios Two
Mary’s insomnia was very severe. She often had trouble sleeping at night. She suspected that it runs in the family because both her brother and father had insomnia. She desperately needs to find a solution, as it has seriously affected her normal life. She found that the Smart Pillow, which allows for genetic testing and sleeps therapy to helps her sleep better.
The pillow can be genetically tested for hair and dander that falls on the pillow, and the pillow’s softness and height can be adjusted according to the user’s sleep quality. As Mary had expected, her insomnia did run in the family. The system gives a series of treatment options, but these require Mary to upload her own health information, which the system then uses to further treat her. This made Mary, who is usually very concerned about her privacy, very hesitant. But in the end, she agreed to share her private data.
After all, in health and privacy, she is more concerned about health issues. She could sacrifice some privacy in exchange for an improvement in her insomnia problem. Mary now has some improvement in her sleep problems. But she does not know if the pillow has improved her condition or if the series of treatment has given her a comforting effect.
- Scenarios Three
Bob has a happy family and his new home was built recently. He needed to purchase life insurance for his family before his life could be put on the track. He remembered a company that offered life insurance with a discount — the higher the health score, the higher the insurance discount, as long as you do a health assessment. The health management system company offers various appliances for home use that can assess and monitor human health, including a smart toilet, which can detect various information about the stool, including genetic information and diseases.
After the user defecates, the smart toilet generated the health reports of the family members separately. Bob brought the health report to the insurance company and got a good discount on his life insurance purchase. With the intelligent health management system used at home, Bob can understand the health risks from the DNA level and take precautionary actions. By understanding the gene of the user, the system can also recommend medications that fit most for the user’s physical conditions.
All in all, Bob was very happy and wanted to buy more products from this health management system company. He says he can’t live without these smart devices, as his family’s health is more important than anything else.
Video Scenario
Or CLICK HERE link to the video
