Giulia Tomasello

Interaction designer, teacher, workshop designer, women's health advocate, Giulia Tomasello is the creator of the speculative co-design platform Alma and the educational platform Coded Bodies, three projects on the border between design and science designed to intercept the taboos related to women's health care through objects capable of communicating the state of intimate bacterial flora and taking care of it in the most immediate and natural way.

Coded Bodies: technology close to the skin

Giulia Tomasello: “As we hurtle toward biological collapse, the challenge and responsibility of contemporary designers, thinkers and researchers is to lead with awareness and sensitivity both towards the planet and its people. We have the responsibility to create a space for dialogue and a framework for reflection, to inspire innovation that will disrupt our current model”.

From this reflection was born Coded Bodies, an educational platform designed to learn the basics of soft wearables through the exploration of biological fabrics.

Coded Bodies proposes a workshop in which participants explore the potential of bacterial cellulose for the cultivation of biological material, in this specific case the female bacterial flora.

The goal is to create speculative scenarios for second skins, sensors and adaptive and reactive structures to begin designing sensorial surfaces for wearables and to imagine how biotechnology and new materials will enter everyday life.

Alma is a project that combines anthropology, science and technology to deconstruct the taboos of women's health

Designers work through layers of research. They start with a theme, a problem, and discover that there are many possible solutions and interventions. A way of operating that is even more true when we talk about young designers of a generation that is facing a cultural change that is strongly necessary and desired, but undoubtedly difficult.

Alma was born first and foremost as a co-design platform to identify practices capable of deconstructing women's taboos.

Giulia Tomasello does not work alone, of course. The team, which also includes men, has conducted workshops all over the world, finding that taboos are everywhere.

The first step was to design a tool kit designed for exploration and self-knowledge.

Speculum, anatomical reproductions of the female sexual apparatus, are redesigned with non-aggressive, less technical aesthetics, materials and colours, more suited to the purpose of putting at ease “any body with a vagina”.

Alma sensor, a sensor connected to an app that reports problems in the intimate biome

The second step was the co-creation of Alma Sensor, a non-invasive kit to monitor vaginal health. In case the analysis of pH and lactic acid reveal anomalies, the kit helps to identify what the problem is.

It might sound like feminist DIY once again. So let's go into the details of the research: "The key tasks were: fabrication of the reference electrode, fabrication of the pH electrode and testing of the sensor. All the fabrication was performed in the Kar-Narayan laboratory in the Department of Materials Science, University of Cambridge with the support of Open Science Fund and Hackster.io.

The sensor received the first prize of the Biomaker Challenge.

The silver electrode and conductive paths were successfully printed and the formation of the reference electrode was confirmed by Raman spectroscopy. During the test, the pH and reference electrode were connected to create a sensor. The sensor performance was evaluated using a potentiostat and different pH buffer solutions,” explains Tomasello to tell the (serious) scientific journey that resulted in Alma Sensor.