need-finding for personal fabricators
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Andrew Lambert, Rui He, Isaac Piller, Anant Mohan
Need-finding for Personal Fabricators
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Our cross-functional team of four conducted a contextual inquiry to discover and address any unfulfilled human needs in the Champaign-Urbana Fab Lab.
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Our users, personal fabricators, are motivated by personal gain to complete projects requiring machinery. They work in “fab labs”.
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“A Fab Lab (fabrication laboratory) is a small-scale workshop with an array of flexible computer controlled tools that cover several different length scales and various materials, with the aim to make ‘almost anything’.”
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In the Fab Lab, you can...
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design,1
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fabricate,2
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build,3
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...personal projects!
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For our study, we interviewed staff and visitors in the Fab Lab. We also conducted participant observation.
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We noticed that kids and their parents--a target audience--were mysteriously missing.
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We set up visits with kids and parents so we could understand their experience.
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Parents sought an educational bonding experience with their kids. They felt intimidated though.
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Kids expressed wild expectations about what they could build.
“I want to build a robot!”-Billy, age 8
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Parents wanted clear expectations.
“How much does it cost?”
$“How much time
does it take?”“What materials do we need?”
“I don’t even know what to do.”
?
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We began to ideate to address these needs.
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Our initial top concept was a project management website to help kids and parents scope a project.
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While testing our concept, we saw that projects were done on-the-fly with help from lab staff.
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Instead of planning, children ran to a nearby display case to pick small projects that they wanted to work on.
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As a result, the concept evolved to an online display case which conveys project possibilities to prospective visitors.
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We also created guide signs to orient visitors to the physical space quickly.
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Links
High fidelity mockups of DISPLAYKASE Project poster
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After our recommendations, the Fab Lab’s website now sets concrete expectations for visitors.
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The lab now also features guide signs.