In most if not all engineering disciplines, engineers design complex systems by combining simpler components. This is the idea of modularity, an idea so potent one could hardly come up example of a functioning system that doesn't use modularity. Why is this idea so fruitful?. Modularity offers easiness of design and simple modificiation of an already working system. For example, a sensor can be easily replaced by a different sensor to measure different quantity. Same procedure can be done with every other type of component. Diploid IODs form from two haploids. Thus, their user can conduct countless combinations of sensors (receptors), transmitters (pheromones), and locational tags (yeast display). Furthermore, the design of IODS offers another level of modularity in communication between different IOD types.

One of the main goal of cybernetic is to describe system, control it and be able to know reaction of this system on a concrete input signal. This reaction may be in form of output signal that can be measured and can influence another system. IODs are excellent example of such system. Pheromone represents input signal and output signals are yeast display and another pheromone which is an input signal for another IOD system.

Engineers often use graphical block diagramming tools to make functionality of system transparent. Block models simplify work on system description. It is not necessary to describe a system with difficult differential equations and recurrence relations. We used these diagrams for graphical representation of IODs. This approach made our project more clear to engineers non-biologists.