What´s in a name?
“Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life"
Before Knowla was a company she was a gynoid, a robot character designed to resemble a female. In my science fiction novel she is the protagonist, the brainchild of a designer wanting to create the ultimate human lie detector and behavior decoder. As Oscar Wilde puts it: "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life".
I have always been fascinated with robots and particularly robots which have a humanoid form. For a designer and a human behavior enthusiast there is something particularly appealing in trying to breathe life to an object. It feels like a vast playground with endless options to choose from and the ultimate challenge for a creative mind. Perhaps even more interestingly, it is a study in the essence of humanity. Like a baker baking a cake, what ingredients would you need for the perfect human?
The first time I tried to write science fiction was when I studied at the Arts University Bournemouth in England. For one of my course works I wrote and illustrated a short story titled: “People Don´t Really Die, They Go On Vacation”. It was a story of a gynoid who tried to adjust to domesticated life with a human husband, but kept failing. She laughed too hard, was unable to show the correct feeling at the correct time and did not have her own quirks. Her interactions were more like a performance or as she says in the short story: “Put me on a stage and I will shine for you.” This behavior does not create a connection with humans. Even though he chose the perfect specimen, he does not feel a connection. In the design process the designer of the gynoid forgot to incorporate flaws and shortcomings, characteristics which makes humans relatable and unique. In other words, the designer did not understand human behavior.
The evolution of Knowla
The idea of Knowla Educational Technologies emerged over the course of three years of designing, developing and testing the Oksa program. The Oksa program is a narrative based society building tool for children. Oksa uses design and design thinking as tools of learning. I originally became interested in designing for children for two reasons. First, childhood has a significant importance in developing our values, habits, beliefs and behaviors. I was fortunate to grow up in a home, surrounded by love, encouragement and opportunity as well as plenty of nature to play in. I know first hand how impactful a solid foundation is in creating a strong sense of self and how important it is for children to have the freedom to play and create in a safe, encouraging environment. Secondly, design and design thinking as tools of education are almost non-existing. Learning design and design thinking develops critical thinking, problem solving skills, empathy and creative thinking, uniquely human skills which are increasingly important when navigating a data driven, information filled society.
From the very beginning Knowla the gynoid was used as a teaching tool. Knowla was introduced to students in the Oksa program as a link between nature, culture and technology. I wanted to design a bipedal, human-like robot character, even though we humans are excellent at anthropomorphizing. From learning about storytelling, the building block of communication, through a short story titled Knowla´s problem, to rethinking the way we design by applying biomimetic design principles, Knowla the robot is the narrator of the Oksa learning program.
Seeing the direct impact of my work with the Oksa program, I became increasingly interested in designing with the goal to impact behavior on a larger scale. Real lasting change happens only by altering behavior. Curiosity and grit are two qualities I consider to be human superpowers. With persistence and willingness to learn the things we can create and accomplish are limitless. My curiosity has led me to observe and analyse human behavior. Patterns create behavior and behavior impacts not only our own life but the well-being of the whole planet. How can we design a future which supports our human behaviors and more interestingly how can we design new behaviours? This, in my opinion, is a worthy challenge for a designer to tackle.
Knowla Educational Technologies is the creative company for your brain. Knowla operates in the intersection of education, behavior and habit formation. Our mission is to revolutionize the way we learn and teach our creative brain.