By: Aryeri Bardales, M.S. - December 15th, 2025; Assistant Technical Manager of Animistic
Every December, I sit down to build a gingerbread house—something I only started doing after moving to the United States, since this tradition isn’t common in my home country. Over time, it has become one of those small cultural rituals that I’ve genuinely come to appreciate, and it reminded me why is experimental design important in animal science.
And every December, I’m reminded that gingerbread architecture is not for the impatient.
You think it will be simple—some walls, some frosting, a charming little roof.
Then suddenly you’re holding two collapsing cookie walls with one hand, balancing a roof panel with your elbow, and questioning every decision that led you to this moment.
But this year, as I stood there waiting for the frosting to “act like concrete,” something clicked: this tiny, sugary construction project is a perfect analogy for how we build things in animal science, research, and data-driven decision-making.
A gingerbread house only stands if the base is level, stable, and intentionally planned. It doesn’t matter how beautiful the decorations are or how impressive the final vision looks—if the first pieces aren’t aligned, the entire structure is already working against you.
A slightly uneven base, a wall that leans a few millimeters, or a rushed first layer of frosting may seem harmless at the beginning, but those small misalignments multiply with every step. By the time you get to the roof, the whole house feels fragile, unpredictable, and ready to slide apart.
Animal science research works the same way:
When these components are carefully built, the rest of the project has room to grow with confidence. When they are rushed or overlooked, every downstream task becomes a battle to compensate for mistakes that began long before the data analysis stage.
And just like in gingerbread construction, shortcuts at the beginning will always reveal themselves later.
If any of those start off shaky, no statistical model—or frosting—can fix it, which is exactly why is experimental design important from the very beginning.
You can’t glue all the walls and slap on the roof at once.
Everything needs time to set, dry, and stabilize.
In animal research, we often want every result now:
But rushing biological systems or datasets is like trying to decorate a roof before it’s attached.
Spoiler: it slides off every time.
Good science—and good engineering, even the edible kind—happens when each stage is allowed its own rhythm, highlighting why is experimental design important when working with biological systems.
The candy details are always the fun part: gumdrops, peppermint walkways, the sprinkle of sugar snow. These are the pieces that make a gingerbread house feel magical and complete.
But none of that matters if the walls are shifting or the roof is sliding.
Decorations only enhance a structure that is already stable; they can’t rescue one that isn’t.
Our professional world works the same way:
It’s tempting to jump ahead to the “pretty parts”—the presentation, the graphics, the final narrative. But if the core work underneath is unstable, those additions become distractions rather than strengths.
In science, just like in gingerbread engineering, the details only shine when the foundation is strong.
First build something worth decorating; then let the decorations elevate it.
The best gingerbread builds happen with more than one pair of hands—
one person steadying the wall, one applying frosting, one checking alignment.
Animal science is exactly the same.
Behind every dataset, every breakthrough, every on-farm improvement, there’s a team:
Science doesn’t move forward because of one person—it moves forward because of the collective steadying of the walls.
Sometimes nothing is wrong with the design, the frosting, or the gingerbread.
The only thing missing is patience.
And that’s true for:
The sweetest things—like a finished gingerbread house or a meaningful dataset—take time to come together.
This year’s gingerbread house reminded me that building anything worthwhile—research, programs, innovations, teams—requires structure, curiosity, patience, and collaboration.
We’re all constructing something, piece by piece.
Sometimes it’s a model. Sometimes it’s a barn protocol. Sometimes it’s a career.
And sometimes, it’s a little cookie house held together with royal icing and determination.
Either way: respect the process, trust your team, and let the frosting dry—because understanding why is experimental design important shapes how we build better research, better systems, and better outcomes.
