Research

Makers, materials 
and machines

My PhD work revolved around interactions and experience with materials and machines at the makerspace. Throughout the thesis, making is discussed as a practice of importance for interaction design and conceptualised as involving a particular mindset.
In summary, I propose that makers surface particular abilities and skills when experiencing technology, valuing materials, making-sense of processes of production and caring for machines.

  • My work argues that the phenomenon calls for a deeper reflection on recent movements on material interaction and materiality on the one hand, and perspectives on machine interactions on the other.

  • I explore how situated and embodied practices can be revealed in investigations of makerspace activities.

  • Further, my work describes how makers experience and make sense of the materials and machines that populate makerspaces.

  • Finally, I map out how insights on experience and practice with machines and materials can be conceptualised in a way that become useful for contemporary interaction design practices. 

#makerphd

Concepts my research produced

  • Material Literacy

    Provides a novel perspective on literacy in connection with technological artifacts, where makers read meaning into materials. This opens the way for new types of engagements, interpretations and experiences that help us to understand humantechnological relationships. The concept of material literacy contributes to the discussion on the interplay between computational materials and experience. It positions making as an experientially oriented process of engaging with technology and the social process around it.

  • Material Qualities

    In several of my papers I articulate material qualities, which point to the importance of thorough considerations of how such qualities touch upon the personal and social driving forces behind people’s engagement.

    Moreover, this refers to the wide range of skills and interests that people have, and how these aspects may interplay in the design of new things and technologies.

  • Machine Sensibility

    Is a concept that pinpoints some underlying aspects of 3D printing practice. My work thus highlights how makers gain material and machine understanding through interwoven embodied and social sense-making. The concept states that practice around 3D printers relies on embodied and situated interactions and abilities.

    Furthermore, machine sensibility can act as an analytic lens to explore machine materiality and machine agency in interaction design.

  • Producing Printability

    By articulating the need for alignment of the 3D printing process, where material and machines appear as unpredictable and therefore require constant negotiation, educated guesses and a deeper understanding, this connects the maker-material-machine in constant interplay as the process is reconfigured.

    Here, material behaviour and temporal aspects impact the practice, and different approaches such as finding individual and social workarounds, improvisation and adaptation, come to the fore.

  • The Pliable Machine

    This concept relates to both the software and hardware of a machine, but also involves the social and situated context of the makerspace. The requirements are an accessible machine that can be altered, skills that go beyond use and a surrounding ‘maker culture’ of caring, sharing and experimentation.

    Activities similar to the modding of the laser cutter become an integral dimension of what constitutes a machine in the makerspace. Furthermore, modding acts as an example of how machine interaction can play out in the makerspace, which implies a close relationship and continuous creative and social involvement with the machines in question.

  • Maker Mindset

    Presents a way how practitioners gradually get to know and then treat the materials (and machines) around them. Here we articulate how developing a maker mindset entails openness, curiosity, responsiveness, being a co-creator and the willingness to make use of technology and materials, which we frame as key to becoming a maker pedagogue. The makerspace is a place for this mindset to develop in a process-oriented and reflective manner.

Publications

(selection)

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  • Link to the publishers page is found here

  • Link to the publishers page is found here

  • Find access to the chapter here

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In summary

As a result of studying both individuals and groups of makers – observing their practice, listening to their stories and making sense of the experiences they share – I argue that maker activities help us to find alternative ways of valueing and treating materials, machines and things in times when resources become scarce. With my contributions, I aim to approach these entities in a similarly interested, passionate and curious way as lot of makers put forth.

My research showed how interactions with material and machines in the makerspace offer insights into close human-technology relationships that can be inspirational for how HCI and the wider society in general looks after these things in the future.