"Make the Breast Pump Not Suck" Hackathon

A two-day event held at the MIT Media Lab on 20-21 September 2014, organised by Catherine D'Ignazio, Alexis Hope and colleagues after a small working session earlier that year, which brought together about 150 parents, engineers, designers and healthcare practitioners to redesign the breast pump and the conditions around breastfeeding. It produced a documentary, two peer-reviewed papers (including one at CHI 2016) and new products, and was followed in May 2018 by a second hackathon paired with a paid family leave policy summit of more than 250 participants, with an explicit focus on equity. A powerful example of this is the "Make the Breast Pump Not Suck" Hackathon hosted at the MIT Media Lab, born from a user-identified problem: notoriously poor breast pump design. The process brought together a diverse group of partners, including mothers, designers, engineers, and public health researchers. Crucially, the mothers were positioned not as subjects but as core experts, leading the definition of problems from ergonomics to inefficiency. Working in teams, they co-created solutions alongside technical experts, whose role was to facilitate and translate the mothers' lived experiences.