Becoming a designer-scientist: A designer’s journey into laboratory practice and material characterization as creative tools for biodesign with bacterial cellulose

• Exploring the process of becoming a designer-scientist through an autoethnographic journey of a designer inside a chemistry laboratory. • Exploring bacterial cellulose in the lab increased design possibilities for new material applications. • Demonstrating how laboratory methodologies and material characterization (SEM, FTIR, XRD) can inform creative decision-making in biodesign. • Advocating for scientific literacy and laboratory training in design education to prepare hybrid practitioners for transdisciplinary futures. With the integration of biotechnology into design practices (biodesign), designers are learning to navigate between the interfaces of design and science. However, for designers, the laboratory often remains an unfamiliar environment: structured, procedural, and often perceived as incompatible with creative practice. This study attempts to demystify laboratory practice and explores how laboratory practice can function as a creative methodology for designers through the reflection of the primary author’s journey from designer to designer-scientist with an autoethnographic exploration of bacterial cellulose. Conducted within a chemistry laboratory, this study investigates how scientific protocols, tools, and material characterization techniques can inform design decisions and expand material design for designers. The findings show that engaging with laboratory methodologies allow designers to think through materials by observing transformation at both aesthetic and molecular levels, linking empirical data to creative decision-making. Reflecting on moments of uncertainty, adaption and learning, this study illustrates how laboratory practice reshapes the designer’s practice and identity, fostering confidence and fluency across disciplinary boundaries. Ultimately, this study argues that the act of “becoming a designer-scientist” reframes biodesign as both an empirical and reflective practice, while opening new pathways for sustainable and transdisciplinary futures.