Additive Innovation in Design Thinking and Making*
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International Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 32, No. 3(B), pp. 1438±1444, 2016 0949-149X/91 $3.00+0.00 Printed in Great Britain # 2016 TEMPUS Publications. Additive Innovation in Design Thinking and Making* SHAWN JORDAN and MICAH LANDE The Polytechnic School, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University, Mesa, AZ 85212, USA. E-mail: [email protected] and [email protected] A Maker is a modern-day tinkerer and hands-on builder of DIY artifacts. Makers create their inventions wholly out of their imaginations, with the support of a rich collaborative online and in-person community. This paper describes the results from a qualitative study of adult Makers and their characteristics of collaboration in the Maker community. Results indicate that Makers exhibit a mindset of Additive Innovation. This describes the open community of sharing and learning that is the Maker community. Connections between engineering and Making are also discussed. Keywords: making; maker community; design thinking; innovation; design process 1. Introduction kers. With this work, we explore how design think- ing overlaps with Makers in the Maker community, Each weekend, in some corner of the world, groups and engineering writ large. We are interested in how of people convene at Mini Maker Faires and ¯ag- we might leverage the growing community of ship Maker Faires to share technological novelties Makers to learn, inform, and redesign how we they have created. They also witness the technolo- teach engineering in higher education. gical wonders others have built on their work- benches. It is a community-focused version of the 2. Design thinking & making middle school science fair or college design project fair. People of all ages participate and display their Design thinking [4, 12] is a way of knowing, doing mostly functional prototypes that solve problems and acting with a central tenant of an empathy-led, that they care about to make impact in the world. user-centered engineering design process. User-cen- They use their imagination, building skills, and tered design approaches focus on people as part of a apply design thinking to their Making work. system, and posit that the user can be the catalyzing These Makers show off qualities like practical starting point for innovation [5±11]. Design think- ingenuity and creativity in their work, and exhibit ing is part of design education [12], and is at the root a penchant for self-directed and lifelong learning. of business innovation [13±19]. Beckman and Barry These qualities are useful for both participating in [20] described design thinking as a learning process these Maker-related events and in the workplace. of observing, developing frameworks, creating new These qualities are also characteristics captured in imperative (ideas), and providing solutions. Design the National Academy of Engineering's Engineer of thinkers use related steps in the engineering design 2020 vision project [1]. process to empathize, de®ne, ideate, prototype, and We seek to understand design thinking and test [3]. With a focus on human values or desirability Makers and how they are inclusive or exclusive of [21] before feasibility or viability, problem refram- what we expect from design thinking and engineer- ing and problem solutions generate and create new ing thinking activities of engineers and engineering ideas or experiences that express insights connected students. Faced with a dynamic world of complex to people, users, or customs. Design thinkers focus problems that cross disciplinary boundaries, our on the process to generate insights from users to country needs this technical and engineering talent produce an idea or a crude prototype that commu- to solve challenges like the National Academy of nicates that idea. Their exploration is more about Engineering Grand Challenges for Engineering [2]. the idea than its construction or realization. Mind- The talent necessary to solve these problems largely sets for design thinking or ``orientations to learn- comes from a formal engineering education system ing'' have been identi®ed as ``human-centeredness, challenged with producing sufficient numbers of empathy, mindfulness of process, culture of proto- quali®ed engineers. However, there are useful qua- typing, show don't tell, bias toward action and li®cations beyond the expectation of the traditional. radical collaboration'' [3]. The nature of radical collaboration [3] within design Making encompasses tinkering with technology. thinking and making activities is illustrated in this A Maker is an emerging colloquial term used to work as Additive Innovation, with implications for describe a group of do-it-yourself-minded indivi- how we do design thinking and teach design thin- duals participating in informal communities (doing- 1438 * Accepted 30 September 2015. Additive Innovation in Design Thinking and Making 1439 it-with-others) that support and celebrate building analysis on the transcribed interviews (generating and prototyping technical proof-of-concept theory from the data), which fed back to inform exploration and ad-hoc product development. A questions asked in the interview protocol. The Maker is a modern-day tinkerer and hands-on results from individual inductive analysis were doer and fashioner of stuff. Makers create their triangulated with a deductive coding of the data to inventions wholly out of their imaginations, with generate a theory of Maker design communities. the support of a rich collaborative community both This triangulated theory, inductively grounded in online and in person. By de®ning terms, participants data and deductively connected to literature, collectively de®ned ``making'' (as an example) as describes the Maker community's philosophies of ``making something'' [22]. The act of Making is to design and helps inform improvements for formal make real ideas, but often with the aid of rapid engineering education. prototyping tools or other technology. It matters less what the creation actually is but more so the act 4. FindingsÐadditive innovation mindset of creating and building an artifact. The product is more important than the process, differentiating Findings from our qualitative artifact elicitation Makers from design thinkers. Professional engi- and critical incident interviews showed that neers, artists, and hobbyists alike participate in the Makers demonstrate the characteristics of an Addi- Maker movement. However, even though the arti- tive Innovation mindset that describes the open facts created by many Makers involve signi®cant community of sharing and learning that is in the engineering, many Makers have no formal engineer- Maker community. Introduced in this paper as an ing education background even though their own umbrella concept, Additive Innovation is a mode of vocational advancement could readily bene®t. collaboration where participants in a community Dougherty [23] also has aligned a ``Maker Mindset'' are: with Dweck's growth mindset [24] concept, ``sum- (a) inspired by shared artifacts/ideas, marized as `what can you do with what you know?''' (b) openly share (and learn about) technology and processes used to create these, artifacts/ideas, 3. Methodology (c) design and prototype own modi®ed version of the shared artifact/idea, and This study used a thematic analysis [31] based in a (d) share their modi®ed artifact/idea back with the constructivist grounded theory [32] framework to community. explore the research question, how does the Maker community approach innovation? Forty-two adult The community design process in Fig. 1 and exam- Makers were recruited and interviewed at ¯agship ples below from the Maker community further Maker Faires in New York City and the San illustrate the mindset of additive innovation. Francisco Bay Area over the last 3 years. Partici- Selected passages from these qualitative interviews pants were purposefully strati®ed across descriptors are used to illustrate aspects of the Additive Innova- such as self-identi®cation as a Maker, age, demo- tion mindset in the following sections. graphic, and years as a Maker, formal or informal engineering education experience, and engineering- 4.1 Inspiring a community of innovators related careers or hobbies. Makers participated in At Maker Faires, there are a large range of projects artifact elicitation interviews, based on the method on display. Categories include toys and Tesla coils, of photo elicitation [25] on site, and critical incident technique interviews [26] via Skype in the weeks following. Each interview lasted approximately 60 minutes. Example artifact elicitation interview questions included: What skills did you have to learn to build [project]? and How does your passion for [project] relate to job or major in school? Exam- ple critical incident interview questions included: Tell me about a time when you decided what to study in college and Tell me about a time when you decided not to pursue a career in engineering. A portion of each interview focused questions on the boundaries among ``designing,'' ``engineering'' and ``making.'' Several times throughout the study (in iterative cycles), individual members of the Fig. 1. Additive Innovation Mindset Community Design Princi- research team conducted an inductive thematic ples. 1440 Shawn Jordan and Micah Lande alternative energy and Arduino projects. Absurd 4.2 Sharing and learning recipes of how ``it'' was practicality is a hallmark of many projects in the made Maker community. Makers exhibit projects with The Maker community