Designing for Tinkerability

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Make magazine. Maker Faires. Makerspaces. Maker clubs. In the past few years, there has been a surge of interest in making. A growing number of people are becoming engaged in building, creating, personalizing, and customizing things in the world around them-making their own jewelry, their own furniture, their own robots. The emerging Maker Movement is catalyzed by both technological and cultural trends. New technologies are making it easier and cheaper for people to create and share things, in both the physical world and the digital world. At the same time, the Maker Movement builds upon a broader cultural shift toward a do-it-yourself approach to life, where people take pride and pleasure in creating things personally rather than only consuming mass-produced goods.