Mia and the Orb

Home medical tests are designed like lab equipment that happens to live in your bathroom. White plastic, clinical type, a result window.

Urinary tract infections are common. Some people get them several times a year, for most of their lives. Taking the test takes a minute. Waiting for the result takes a night, and that night hurts. Nobody designs for the night.

A home UTI test built from wood, knitted wool, and silicone instead of white plastic. You hold the orb while you wait. It glows slowly in the dark, at the pace of a breath.

The material choice is the argument. Precious materials say this is worth your care, and an object you can hold changes what waiting feels like. A result window does not.

I used Research through Design, building the thing in order to find out what building it would teach me. The fabrication was the method, not the deliverable.

It is a thesis project, not a product. It was never clinically validated and was never meant to be. What it produced was a set of design directions for intimate tests that have to live in someone’s home.