The team conducted interviews and observations at a Fab Lab to understand how to better serve personal fabricators and kids with their parents. They found that parents and kids were intimidated by the space and lacked clear expectations for projects. The team developed an online display case concept to convey project possibilities and guide signs for the physical space to improve the visitor experience. Further testing led them to refine the concept to focus on small, demonstration projects instead of full planning. Their recommendations were implemented by the Fab Lab.

1. Andrew Lambert, Rui He, Isaac Piller, James Mohr
Understanding the Practices & Needs of
Personal Fabricators

2. Our cross-functional team of four conducted
a contextual inquiry to discover and
address any unfulfilled human needs in the
Champaign-Urbana Fab Lab.

3. Our users, personal fabricators, are
motivated by personal gain to complete
projects requiring machinery. They work in
“fab labs”.

4. “A Fab Lab (fabrication laboratory) is a small-scale workshop with an
array of flexible computer controlled tools that cover several different
length scales and various materials, with the aim to make ‘almost
anything’.”

5. In the Fab Lab, you can...

6. design,1

7. fabricate,2

8. build,3

9. ...personal projects!

10. For our study, we interviewed staff and visitors in the
Fab Lab. We also conducted participant observation.

11. We noticed that kids and their
parents--a target audience--were
mysteriously missing.

12. We set up visits with kids and parents so we could
understand their experience.

13. Parents sought an
educational bonding
experience with their
kids. They felt
intimidated though.

14. Kids expressed wild expectations
about what they could build.
“I want to build a robot!”
-Billy, age 8

15. Parents wanted clear expectations.
“How much does
it cost?”
$ “How much time
does it take?”
“What materials
do we need?”
“I don’t even
know what to do.”
?

16. We began to
ideate to
address these
needs.

17. Our initial top concept was a project
management website to help kids and
parents scope a project.

19. While testing our
concept, we saw that
projects were done
on-the-fly with help
from lab staff.

20. Instead of
planning, children
ran to a nearby
display case to
pick small projects
that they wanted to
work on.

21. As a result, the
concept evolved to an
online display case
which conveys
project possibilities to
prospective visitors.

22. We also created
guide signs to orient
visitors to the physical
space quickly.

23. Additional Deliverables
High fidelity mockups of DISPLAYKASE
Project poster

24. After our recommendations, the Fab Lab’s website now sets concrete
expectations for visitors.

25. The lab now also
features guide signs.

26. Reflection
● Challenge: teamwork
○ Teammate who contributed early, but became non-responsive
● Design is a highly collaborative process, extremely beneficial to have
others to bounce ideas off of
● Grad school: qual research is iterative, flexible, key is context