Maternal Machines: Design Speculations about Fantasies of Care

Principal Investigator, Wellcome Early Career grant holder

Patting Machines is a collaborative exploration of what constitutes a pat in the context of maternal and infant care, merging the expertise of design, robotics, speculative and critical design, haptics and affective touch. With Paulina Yurman (UAL), Caroline Yan Zheng (Nottingham University), Elia Gatti (UCL) and Matt Malpass (UAL).

Using dolls, props, our bodies, baby blankets, soft fabrics, and existing commercial products that are framed as patting machines for babies, we are doing an embodied exploration of what might constitute a caring pat, either machinic or human, for both babies and their carers. We are critically exploring specific situations where artificial patting might or might not be desirable.

Drawing has long been recognised as a practice for discovery and knowledge production in design and research, and is also used in other disciplines, such as medicine, mathematics, physics and biology. Paulina Yurman uses watercolour drawing as a practice in her research to generate interpretations and speculations about relations with and between technologies and bodies.

The fluidity of watercolour challenges usual representations of technological artefacts (often perceived as embodiments of objective precision), and brings ambiguity, defamiliarization and critical reflection. In Maternal Machines, drawing is also used during workshops with parents, midwives, health visitors, HCI researchers, AI and ethics scholars in this research to visualise experiences with designs technologies for care (both existing and imagined). See more drawings on Instagram @fluid_speculations and in Publications [below] 

Maternal Machines is included in the Design Research Observatory, a curated collection of design research examples intended to provide a route into understanding the value of design research for newcomers and experts.  Design Research Observatory is part of Design Research Works, whose mission is to show the world what it can gain from Design Research.

Dr Paulina Yurman presented highlights of her research at a gathering of Wellcome-funded researchers, London. It brought together researchers working across a broad range of fields: bioinformatics, AI and medical imaging, medical anthropology, stem cell research, bacteriology, bioengineering, medical humanities, patient safety and inequalities in care. Outlining the key questions guiding her work, approaches, methods and emerging insights, Dr Yurman presented her research on design and imaginaries and opportunities with technologies for maternal and infant care.

A workshop at London's Vagina Museum with designers, researchers and practitioners of midwifery, sexual health and maternal/perinatal care. It addressed the fears, anxieties, care and curiosities new mothers might encounter towards the postpartum body. We explored design to support bodily ways of self-knowing, without fear and with curiosity. Designer Laetitia de Allegri drew design configurations of chairs, mirrors or related objects that responded to the issues discussed. These drawings may later be developed, refined or left as they are for public display.

Dr Paulina Yurman took part in CHI 2025 in Yokohama, Japan.

CHI hosted the 1-day workshop ‘Maternal Machines: Imagining Experiences in Perinatal Care’ co-organised by Paulina Yurman with Maria Luce Lupetti, Madeline Balaam, Caroline Yan Zheng, Yoav Luft, Matt Malpass and Celine Mougenot. In this workshop, we explored imagined scenarios of care during the perinatal period, to cultivate critical discussions about practical, ethical and conceptual questions implicated in technologies for care. We particularly explored two interrelated themes: non-numerical forms of knowledge and  touch-related experiences.

Dr Paulina Yurman took part in CHI 2025 in Yokohama, Japan. She presented her paper Drawing Maternal Machines and other Fantasies of Care , an account of her use of drawing as a form of research in Maternal Machines.

Dr Yurman took part in STS Italia, Panel 38: Entangled Theories and Practices: Navigating Relational Ontologies In and Through Design, HCI, STS, and Philosophy of Technology. Her contribution ‘Constellations of Knowing/Not Knowing in Perinatal Care’ [Publications] addresses multiple ways of knowing, uncertainty and the attribution to technology as an authority of knowledge in perinatal care.

Dr Paulina Yurman visited the seminar “Alternative Perspectives on Digital Healthcare”, organised by MAKEAWARE!-Spearhead. The event gathered an international community of healthcare researchers to identify possible research directions. Organised by Serena Cangiano, Ginevra Terenghi, with Teresa Almeida, Arthi Manohar, Aylin Yildirim Tschoepe, Laura Ferrarello, Sara Levati and Matteo Subet.

In the UK, health visitors usually visit parents and their newborns at their home during the first weeks after birth. In this design-led workshop with postgraduate health visiting students (with backgrounds in midwifery, nursing and mental health support), we discussed scenarios during postnatal care and collaboratively speculated about design interventions. We made plasticine objects, descriptive collages with drawings and magazine cutouts and created fictional dialogues with technologies.

This 1-day design-led workshop invited researchers and practitioners working in design research, Human Computer Interaction, AI and ethics, maternal/infant care and medical humanities to discuss, interrogate and speculate about imaginaries (historical and contemporary), designs and opportunities with technologies related to maternal and infant care.

The goal was to collaboratively interrogate, speculate and discuss possible design scenarios in postpartum situations with experts from various multidisciplinary perspectives; and develop a research network.

Workshop and presentation of Maternal Machines. 'Imagining Perinatal Care, Machines and Non-Numerical Bodily Knowledge' was a workshop with researchers working in intimate technologies and soma design. We drew and discussed scenarios where non-numerical and sensorial forms of bodily knowledge coexist with technologies in perinatal care. Paulina Yurman also gave a talk about her research project Maternal Machines

A presentation of Maternal Machines, and speculative drawing workshop with researchers working in AI and ethics was held at The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) at the University of Cambridge in May 2024.