JENNY BOURBEAU is frustrated. For the past 10 months, the Massachusetts mother has been pumping breast milk for her young son. Like many mothers who need to use a breast pump, she tried using one, but it was an impersonal and difficult experience.
“I spent a lot of time with the pump and the process, thinking about how bad it is and how it could be better and wondering why it hasn't been done yet,” he says.
Last weekend, Bourbeau, her son, and more than 150 engineers, designers, health experts, and parents gathered at the MIT Media Lab for a hackathon called “Make the Breast Pump Not Suck.” Their goal: to spend two days radically redesigning such devices, which innovation has forgotten. The design has changed little since portable pumps became widely available more than 20 years ago.
