Building a maker community around an open hardware platform
This paper reflects on the dynamics and practices of building a maker community around a new hardware platform. We ex- amine the factors promoting the successful uptake of a maker platform from two perspectives: first, we investigate the tech- nical and user experience considerations that users iden...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Conference or Workshop Item |
| Published: |
ACM Press
2017
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/41912/ |
| _version_ | 1848796381727162368 |
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| author | Morreale, Fabio Moro, Giulio Chamberlain, Alan Benford, Steve McPherson, Andrew P. |
| author_facet | Morreale, Fabio Moro, Giulio Chamberlain, Alan Benford, Steve McPherson, Andrew P. |
| author_sort | Morreale, Fabio |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | This paper reflects on the dynamics and practices of building a maker community around a new hardware platform. We ex- amine the factors promoting the successful uptake of a maker platform from two perspectives: first, we investigate the tech- nical and user experience considerations that users identify as the most important. Second, we explore the specific activities that help attract a community and encourage sustained partici- pation. We present an inductive approach based on the case study of Bela, an embedded platform for creating interactive audio systems. The technical design and community building processes are detailed, culminating in a successful crowdfund- ing campaign. To further understand the community dynamics, the paper also presents an intensive three-day workshop with eight digital musical instrument designers. From observations and interviews, we reflect on the relationship between the platform and the community and offer suggestions for HCI researchers and practitioners interested in establishing their own maker communities. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:47:05Z |
| format | Conference or Workshop Item |
| id | nottingham-41912 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:47:05Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | ACM Press |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-419122020-05-04T18:44:49Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/41912/ Building a maker community around an open hardware platform Morreale, Fabio Moro, Giulio Chamberlain, Alan Benford, Steve McPherson, Andrew P. This paper reflects on the dynamics and practices of building a maker community around a new hardware platform. We ex- amine the factors promoting the successful uptake of a maker platform from two perspectives: first, we investigate the tech- nical and user experience considerations that users identify as the most important. Second, we explore the specific activities that help attract a community and encourage sustained partici- pation. We present an inductive approach based on the case study of Bela, an embedded platform for creating interactive audio systems. The technical design and community building processes are detailed, culminating in a successful crowdfund- ing campaign. To further understand the community dynamics, the paper also presents an intensive three-day workshop with eight digital musical instrument designers. From observations and interviews, we reflect on the relationship between the platform and the community and offer suggestions for HCI researchers and practitioners interested in establishing their own maker communities. ACM Press 2017-05-06 Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed Morreale, Fabio, Moro, Giulio, Chamberlain, Alan, Benford, Steve and McPherson, Andrew P. (2017) Building a maker community around an open hardware platform. In: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 17), 6-11 May 2017, Denver, Colorado, USA. Maker community DIY crowdfunding embedded hardware digital musical instruments pluggable communities http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3026056 |
| spellingShingle | Maker community DIY crowdfunding embedded hardware digital musical instruments pluggable communities Morreale, Fabio Moro, Giulio Chamberlain, Alan Benford, Steve McPherson, Andrew P. Building a maker community around an open hardware platform |
| title | Building a maker community around an open hardware platform |
| title_full | Building a maker community around an open hardware platform |
| title_fullStr | Building a maker community around an open hardware platform |
| title_full_unstemmed | Building a maker community around an open hardware platform |
| title_short | Building a maker community around an open hardware platform |
| title_sort | building a maker community around an open hardware platform |
| topic | Maker community DIY crowdfunding embedded hardware digital musical instruments pluggable communities |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/41912/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/41912/ |