In order to promote the main idea of our project to the public, we organized several activities through which the public could be more vigilant about bacteria in cosmetics and we could get some constructive suggestions from them. Considering people's habits of obtaining information in the digital era, we paid attention to combine online activities with offline ones, so that it can not only enhance the effectiveness of communication through offline contact but also improve the diversity and funthrough online promotion.
1.Community Lecture -Tianlin Community, Shanghai
According to doctors’ suggestions, we decided to conduct an offline education classes in the Tianlin Community in order to educate the general public about the harm and affects of bacteria infection, as well as raising the public attention about the bacteria in their cosmetics. Together with our team members, we started designing our offline education curriculum. Since our activities are carried out in the middle of the week, it is the primary school students in the Tianlin community who participate in our activities. In order to target the group of primary school students, we first introduced the bacteria and the classification of bacteria to them briefly, and then introduced the focus of our project to them - bacteria can also live in cosmetics. In order to better achieve our publicity and education purposes, we designed a lot of interesting questions for students, and prepared small gifts with our LOGO for them, so that they can more actively participate in the class questions and activities. After the course design was completed, on the afternoon of August 22nd, we arrived at Tianlin Community to carry out offline education activities.
Figure 1&2：Offline lecture in Tianlin Community
First of all, we taught the students the classification of bacteria, popularized the concept of bacteria, and the relationship between bacteria and human life. Then we gave them a sketch of the bacteria and asked the students to design their own bacteria. Such a design can make students have a deeper impression on bacteria, and also make their experience better. Then, we introduced the bacterial breeding process in cosmetics to the students, and told the students the harm of bacterial breeding in cosmetics and how to avoid it with examples. While teaching our students, we also asked them to go back and tell their parents that they need to be concerned about bacterial contamination in cosmetics. Finally, we designed a chessboard related to our project. The gameplay borrows from flying chess, but the content on the chessboard is related to our experiment, including CRISPR technology, sgRNA, CAS-12a protein, and so on. We invited the students to play board games at the end of the class. At the same time, we also taught them about the principle of our experiment, how to detect Staphylococcus aureus and pseudomonas aeruginosa in cosmetics through CRISPR technology, etc.
Figure 3&4: Flying chess
we design & teenagers engaing in this game
Through such an offline science popularization teaching, we have effectively enhanced the attention of the project in a specific area, and also promoted the topic of cosmetic hygiene, so that more people can pay attention to cosmetic pollution and reduce the harm caused by it.
At the same time, we also gained a lot through the activity. For example, we found that important to adopt appropriate communication and education methods for specific age groups. Concretely，we should pay attention to the interactive quality of activities when facing children and teenagers. Meanwhile, the abstract theories need to be visualized when educating the public.
2.Community Lecture -Kangjian Community, Shanghai
Just like the last community science popularization, we walked into the kangjian community to educate children about bacteria related knowledge and the theme of our project: microbial contamination in cosmetics. The specific process this time is the same as last time, but the children in the kangjian community will have a richer experience of microbial contamination in cosmetics. In the Q&A session we set up, some children reported being allergic to cheap cosmetics used during school activities, while others reported experiencing a series of skin problems due to hygiene issues with children's skincare products, This makes us realize that microbial contamination in cosmetics not only exists in adults, but also in children's skincare products.
And in the painting activity we prepared for children: drawing our own bacteria, we also deeply understood that children have extremely serious negative stereotypes about microorganisms such as bacteria and viruses, which also confirms the necessity of popular science education for the public.
figure new 1-4
3.Performance Art
We plan to organize a performance art event within Pinghe School, mainly targeting students aged 13 to 18 years old (teenagers). The theme is about the appearance anxiety of teenagers, and the reason for this theme is that many young people often use cosmetics due to appearance anxiety. Without guidance, they are likely to use expired or bacterial contaminated cosmetics, This will have further negative effects on their skin and create some psychological problems. The purpose of our exhibition is to help teenagers alleviate appearance anxiety and educate them on how to use cosmetics correctly. The activity format is as follows:
Our pre task is to conduct a questionnaire to investigate which topics in the field of appearance anxiety are of interest to everyone. In the future, we will place a blank Facebook on campus, which is divided into two parts. One is to allow students to freely express their inner opinions on their appearance, and the other is to allow them to express their desired appearance to the outside world.
Figure 5-7: Performance art
This performance art activity received a good response. We made a poster with a mask that was half pink and half yellow. Students wrote down what they thought they looked like in the pink place and what they wanted to show others in the yellow place. According to the results, there are indeed many students who have contradictions between their real thoughts and their performances in front of people. Some students want to show others a confident and beautiful appearance, but they are actually anxious about their appearance, such as bad skin condition, too dark skin color, or too small eyes. Of course, there are also students who show others that they are not confident.
Therefore, through this activity, we really understand the mental state of many cosmetics users, which helps us to better carry out science popularization, product design and publicity and a series of follow-up work
4.Voting Wall
After we did the online exhibition (will be presented in the Online Education session), we decided to know students’ knowledge about cosmetic and bacteria. So we make a voting wall in the school. The campaign will include a panel with question about if the respondent can remember the expire date for each of his/her cosmetics. As a result, it is clearly shows that most people can not remember it all. These data allow respondent to intuitively feel the seriousness of the problems we face, so that they can better pay attention to our projects. The voting version is better at attracting people's attention, engaging them in the activity, and causing them to reflect and action.
Figure 8&9: Voting wall
1.Popular science videos
In order to better promote and popularize our A.S.P. Project, we decided to make a popular science video on the online education section. In this popular science video, we want to let the public know about the harm and impact of Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa on people, and how they can breed in cosmetics. At the same time, since the audience of our videos range from children to the middle-aged and elderly, our videos are cartoonish in style and introduce the characteristics of Staphylococcus aureus and P. aeruginosa in simple language, and the inflammation they cause. We decided to post this science popularization video on XiaoHongshu, bilibili, Tiktok and other social platforms to publicize bacterial infection and raise public attention while promoting our projects and products.
Figure 10&11: Partial Screens of Popular Science
Videos
2.Popular Science Articles
Through our WeChat official account (@美妆菌不见）， we have written some articles to introduce our project and some relevant knowledge to public. Besides the daily work schedule of the project, we also have written an article about P. aeruginosa and S. aureus, to make public understand the basic attributes of them such as features, damages and the reason for the increase of them in cosmetics.
Figure 12&13: Science articles
3.Online Exhibition
We put an online exhibition board in out WeChat account to display science popularization on bacteria and cosmetics respectively in order to popularize our project to the general public and raise the awareness of cosmetic bacteria pollution. After the promotion of bacterial infection in cosmetics, we investigated the information and informed the public about how to use cosmetics rationally. This promotes their health awareness and can also greatly help them prevent microbial contamination of cosmetics.
figure new 5&6
In order to promote our education activities and our team, we had created several educational tools for both offline and online acitivities. Each of these tools has varying degrees of information and knowledge content to fit different usage. For example, our eduactional slides contains foundation level of synthetic biology knowledge as our target audiences are mainly children. While our roll up banner and brochure contains summarized knowledge abour our project topic, and key information about promoting our team and project.
Figure 14&15: Our education slides for the kids
(Get the attachment by clicking here - 1)
Figure 16: Our roll up banner
(Get the attachment by clicking here - 2)
Figure 17&18: Our brochure
(Get the attachment by clicking here - 3)
Through all activities above, we successfully promote the idea of project to different kinds of people, including children and thier parients, teenagers using cosmetics and other adults paying attention to their beauty. Almost all of these audience had little knowledge about bacteria in cosmetics, let alone the detection of them. Theirfore, it is necessary for us to devote enough resourses, money and ideas to the improve the public awareness of bacteria detection in cosmetic field, just before we put the products to the market in a large scale. Nevertheless, after being told the damages of bacteria in cosmetics, people shew great interest in the detection kits and were willing to buy and use them. That’s to say, the potential costumers of this kind of products may be massive and it is easy to activate their purchasing power as soon as the correct marketing approaches are taken.