This document discusses the ambitions of makers in the maker movement to create social value. It provides examples of how makers are using their skills and digital fabrication technologies to pursue educational, inclusion, and environmental goals through their work. Specifically, it describes how makers are working to educate children through hands-on learning, create assistive technologies to include diverse groups, and promote upcycling/repair to increase environmental awareness. However, it also notes challenges makers face in achieving larger social impacts due to market pressures, intellectual property issues, and questions around economic viability.

1. Makers’ ambitions to do socially valuable
things
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Elisabeth Unterfrauner & Christian Voigt
Centre for Social Innovation, ZSI, Vienna

2. Context Maker Movement
• Making = DIY with digital fabrication technology
• DIY culture
• Re-use of designs (Open Source, CC Licenses)
• Learning-through-doing in a social environment
• Neil Gershenfield (Center for Bits and Atoms) speaks of the
new industrial revolution
• Dale Dougherty: Maker movement

3. Case explorations

4. MAKER
MOVEMENT
Case research process
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Purposful
sampling
Case research
toolkit
Analysis of
cases
Cross-case
analysis
-Interviews
guidelines
-Self-reporting
-On-site visits
etc.
-idiosyncratic
approach
-description of
10 cases
-analysis of
three research
pillars
-nomothetic
approach
-differences and
communalities

5. Example case - Happylab
• FabLab following FabLab charter located in Vienna
• Founded in 2010
• Around 2,000 members
• SME
• Organisation & Governance: accessible to all; minimum
fee; low hurdels technologywise; service infratructure
for safe experimentation and prototyping; gender gap;
• Peer & Collaborative Behaviour: loose community;
interdisciplinarity; long-term vs. seasonal users
• Value Creation & Impact: economic value for start-ups;
social value; educational value
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6. Example maker
• Prototype in Happylab
• Now SME selling product in developing countries
• Approved by WHO
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7. Example maker
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8. Social Innovation
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Education
Inclusion
Environmental
awareness
…

9. Educational ambitions
• Educate children: workshops with schools and
kindergartens
• Interest in STEM
• Mindshift consumers – producers -> prosumers
“I don’t want to have a kid who thinks ‘OK, I want this and
where can I buy it’, instead of “I want this and how can I
make it” (maker, Croatia).
• Train skills for job
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10. Educational ambitions
• Hands-on learning: learning from
others, collaborative learning,
project based learning with people
with different backgrounds
“I think that they are having
this traditional education that is not
preparing them for the real world, to
be competitive (...). When one day
they have to start working and they
are being educated like you just sit
and listen and here are 10 pages and
then you learn them. Most teachers
today are not working this way: they
want their pupils to find out for
themselves” (maker, Croatia).
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11. Inclusion
(1) including diverse kinds
of makers in the maker
space
• democratised access for
all
• Mobile maker space
• Refugee camps
• Senior-Design-Lab
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http://www.lukasbast.at/portfolio/pop-up-fablab-workspace/

12. Inclusion
(2) creating something
useful and beneficial for
diverse communities
• Prostheses
• Assistive technologies:
• Customised spoon
• Golf tee
• Makerton on ‘growing’
wheelchair
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https://3dprint.com/107416/uc-berkeley-designathon/

13. Printing Body Parts
(Prosthesis)
Christian Voigt (WWW.ZSI.AT)

14. Fieldready.org
Christian Voigt (WWW.ZSI.AT)

15. Environmental awareness
• Upcycling and recycling:
„I really like to create things out of junk. This is so
cool when you can pick up something from
the trash pile and make it into something
useful again“ (maker, Estonia)
• The repair culture and circular economy:
“3D printing can help to repair more things
and extend the lifetime of products (…) There
would be production just in time to repair the part,
and then you have a more sustainable
consumption model because people will repair
more” (Maker, Denmark).
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16. Environmental awareness
• Energy-harvesting flower-pot
• Mycotecture
• Hydroponics
• Water pufication
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http://www.iaacblog.com/programs/mycotecture-building-from-mushrooms-2/
https://www.greenoptimistic.com/make-solar-power-flower-pot/

17. Social Innovation
Yes, but…
…micro-level
Awareness of societal needs among the maker
community but also severe challenges:
• Market pressures
• Privacy concerns and uncertainty about intellectual
property
• Economic viability of making
-> Nevertheless: source of inspiration
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18. 18https://pinshape.com/items/25533-3d-printed-thank-you-stamp