ers, biologists, and Roomba tinkerers. Any one of those people might
happen to encounter your project
and offer an interesting idea or even
the solution to a problem that has
had you stymied. This intermixing
creates dialogue and exposes participants to designs and concepts from
many different arenas. And with a
selection of helpful people around,
you have lots of folks willing to
test out a new interface or product
idea. So it’s exciting, but not terribly surprising, that the successful
Makerbot Industries (which makes
inexpensive, open source 3-D printers) got its start at the NYCResistor
hackerspace.
Due to the large number of peo-
ple, high churn, and wide variety
of projects, hackerspaces are great
places to observe some of the rapid
developments currently occurring in
interaction design, in terms of both
software and hardware interac-
tion. Within these spaces, members
share best practices, software tool
kits, APIs, github projects, compo-
nents, and tools. Most hackerspaces
have a sharing ethos similar to that
of the open source movement—
NYCResistor’s motto is “we learn,
share, and make things.”
We do not view hackerspaces
as direct competition for tradi-
tional corporate or university
research labs. Both informal and
formal types of research spaces
are part of a growing ecosystem
of technological innovation. They
share members, and interest-
ing projects move between them.
Readers are vigorously encouraged
to look up a location near them
on hackerspaces.org and drop by
for a tour. Noisebridge and Foulab,
like many hackerspaces, host an
open house on Tuesday nights;
Hacker Dojo has regular “happy
hours” on Fridays. NYCResistor is
open on Thursday evenings and
typically hosts a couple events per
week that are open to the public.
as worthwhile as making several
thousand. As this trend continues,
we may encounter more and more
general-public interest in the field of
tangible interaction design.
Enabling a Tangible Turn
While much of the hype around
open source projects and hackerspaces centers around individuals,
grassroots communities, and small
businesses, researchers can certainly benefit from getting involved
in DIY communities. As our opening
example suggests, the practices of
DIY and open source hardware—
and the tools they produce—are
powerful enablers of exactly the
kind of quick, iterative prototyping
that is considered a best practice in
interaction design.
Designers and researchers do
not just benefit from the existence
of cheap, usable open source hardware—we are contributing to these
projects more and more. A number
of popular open source projects have
academic origins: Arduino, Fritzing,
and TinyOS are just a few that have
taken on a life of their own. The
open source hardware community
can be a great channel for bringing
a research project to maturity in the
wider world.
Moreover, these tools may be
fueling a “tangible turn” for hobbyists and small businesses. The
availability of rapid prototyping
tools and free modeling software
for hobbyists now enables sites like
Thingiverse (see sidebar), where
people share free and modifiable
models that others can print at
home. Conversely, businesses like
Ponoko and Shapeways use their
high-end prototyping equipment to
allow makers to order small batches
of made-to-order physical items,
or even to sell their designs on
their website. Unlike older forms of
manufacturing, such as molding or
vacuum forming, 3-D printing and
laser cutting do not have high fixed
costs; making one widget is about
1. The definition of “hacker” we employ here is
akin to that of “maker,” with an additional connotation of reappropriating objects for other than their
intended purpose. While the term can also connote
someone who uses computer expertise to gain
unauthorized access to data, this article does not
refer to those practices.
2. Brewer, J., Williams, A., and Dourish, P. A handle
on what’s going on: Combining tangible interfaces
and ambient displays for collaborative groups.
Proc. TEI’07 (Baton Rouge, LA). 2007.
3. Studios are six-hour workshops in which participants make tangible prototypes around specific
topics of interest, e.g., game controllers, interactive
books, wearables, etc.
4. The OSH definition can be read in full at http://
freedomdefined.org/OSH W
5. http://www.ohwr.org/projects/cernohl/wiki
6. Cern Bulletin. Open hardware for
open science; http://cdsweb.cern.ch/
journal/CERNBulletin/2011/28/News% 20
Articles/1357331?ln=en
7. Kushner, D. The making of Arduino: How five
friends engineered a small circuit board that’s taking the DIY world by storm. IEEE Spectrum. Oct.
2011; http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/
the-making-of-arduino/0
8. http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/05/03/million-
dollar-baby-businesses-designing-and-selling-open-source-hardware-making-millions/
9. Weiler, L. and Ohlig, J. Building a hacker space:
A hacker space design pattern catalogue. The 24th
Chaos Communication Congress (Berlin, Germany).
2007; http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/
events/ 2133.en.html
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Amanda Williams is a cofounder
of Wyld Collective Ltd., an independent design/research consultancy based in Montreal. Her
research focuses on tangible and
mobile interaction design.
Alicia Gibb, formerly of Bug Labs,
does independent research and
development. She is a member of
N YCResistor and a pioneer in the
open source hardware movement,
co-chairing the Open Hardware
Summit.
Born a nerd, David Weekly, after
getting a CS degree, realized that
hackers could be social and has
since been working on getting
them together by starting compa-
nies, and nonprofits, and parties.
He is the founding director of
March + April 2012
DOI:
10.1145/2090150.2090156
© 2012 ACM 1072-5220/12/03 $10.00