Nikolas Grafakos

ZERO-G Cutlery is a series of redesigned, food-related space products that explores new ways of designing artefacts that shape the human experience in long-duration missions. It broadens the space paradigm to address not only the basic but also the emotional needs of astronauts.

Human needs are currently being retrofitted and adapted into the technology through rigorous training instead of being an equal element of consideration during the mission development. It is an effective method for current short duration missions but we need to incorporate humans needs equally into the mission development if we want to make long-duration space journeys a reality. This entails that there needs to be better facilitation between design processes and engineering disciplines in order to achieve this long term goal. 

This project uses food as a principal tool to explore the methods and process used to design everyday products for microgravity. Through a series of experiments, the three tools were developed to enhance the eating experience in zero gravity. The proposed methodology behind these products attempts to bring the technical requirements of space and human-centred design together to address both the physiological and psychological needs of astronauts. 

Fermi "Machines" explores the idea of building machines to think broad instead of deep. It investigates how humans use broad knowledge to solve fermi (broad) problems within machine constraints. 

Fermi problems are a common practice technique to help humans develop a broader way of thinking. They allow you to formulate an approximate answer to a problem based upon a sequence of questions and logical assumptions. Used in engineering to help people learn how to break big problems into manageable parts by asking the right questions, they ultimately build resilience. 

Our human ability to think broadly has allowed us to thrive in Wicked learning environments, such as politics and ethics, by understanding how to solve complex problems. Unlike us, Artificial Intelligence has been limited by its performance to solve problems only in specialised and narrow fields, defined as Kind learning environments, such as games like chess or Go. 

If we could understand how humans utilise their broad thinking to solve complex problems it may lead to expanding the capabilities of machine intelligence.

J{AI}NE DOE is a digital tool that allows law enforcement to augment their ability to reach, identify and convict traffickers by streamlining, automating, and scaling the deployment of AI victim personas to engage with online sex traffickers.

The Internet is a hospitable environment for traffickers as they can easily scale their recruiting and grooming operations, law enforcement presence is minimal, and anonymity helps them avoid detection while abetting the deception of potential victims. J{AI}NE DOE seeks to make the online environment more hostile for traffickers and serve as a deterrence by supporting cyber operations.