Do-It-Yourself Devices Personal Fabrication of Custom Electronic Products David Adley Mellis SB Mathematics Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 2003 MA Interaction Design Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, June 2006 SM Media Arts and Sciences Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 2011 Submitted to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences School of Architecture and Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology September 2015 © 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All right reserved. Author: David A. Mellis Program in Media Arts and Sciences August 7, 2015 Certified by: Mitchel Resnick LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research Program in Media Arts and Sciences Accepted by: Pattie Maes Academic Head Program in Media Arts and Sciences Do-It-Yourself Devices Personal Fabrication of Custom Electronic Products David Adley Mellis Submitted to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences School of Architecture and Planning on August 7, 2015 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Abstract Many domains of DIY (do-it-yourself) activity, like knitting and woodworking, offer two kinds of value: the making process itself and using the resulting products in one’s life. With electronics, the sophistication of modern devices makes it difficult to combine these values. Instead, when people make electronics today, they generally use toolkits and other prototyping processes that aren’t well suited to extended use. This dissertation investigates digital fabrication (of both electronic circuit boards and enclosures) as an alternative approach to DIY electronics, one that can support individuals in both making devices and using them in their daily lives. The dissertation explores three questions: (1) What are the scope and limits of the personal fabrication of electronic products? (2) How can we engage people in the personal fabrication of electronic products? (3) Why make electronic products using personal fabrication? These questions are explored through two investigations. The first is a DIY cellphone, including an autobiographical approach exploring my making and use of the device. Also documented are workshops and other dissemination in which others have made their own phones. The second investigation is a six-week workshop in which participants designed and made internet-connected devices. The investigations reveal personal fabrication as a robust, open- ended, and nuanced means of making devices for use in daily life, but with limitations and constraints imposed by the commercial ecosystem surrounding this DIY practice and by the nature of electronic products. Analysis of the workshops reveals multiple trajectories that people take in these activities; the computational concepts, skills, and practices they develop; and strategies for engaging them. Finally, the investigations reveal multiple values for the personal fabrication of electronic products, including its ability to transform people’s relationships with the technology in their lives. Thesis Supervisor: Mitchel Resnick Title: LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research Do-It-Yourself Devices Personal Fabrication of Custom Electronic Products David Adley Mellis Leah Buechley Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences (2009–2014) Massachusetts Institute of Technology Do-It-Yourself Devices Personal Fabrication of Custom Electronic Products David Adley Mellis Björn Hartmann Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science University of California, Berkeley Acknowledgements Thank you to my advisors, past, present, and future. To Leah Buechley, for creating High-Low Tech, for inviting me to be a part of it, and for your passionate dedication to changing the culture of technology. To Mitchel Resnick, for welcoming me into Lifelong Kindergarten and for sharing your commitment to creativity and learning. To Björn Hartmann, for inviting me to continue my work with you at UC-Berkeley, and for your insight and clarity. Thank you to all the members of High-Low Tech and Lifelong Kindergarten, for your ideas, collaboration, and encouragement over these six years: Hannah Perner-Wilson, Emily Lovell, Jie Qi, Ed Baafi, Sam Jacoby, Jennifer Jacobs, Kanjun Qiu, Amon Millner, Jay Silver, Eric Rosenbaum, Ricarose Roque, Sayamindu Dasgupta, Tiffany Tseng, Abdulrahman Idlbi, Champika Fernando, Alisha Panjwani, Shrishti Sethi, Juliana Nazaré, Natalie Rusk, Kreg Hanning. And to everyone that has made the Media Lab and MIT an amazing place to be: Amit Zoran, Sean Follmer, Lining Yao, David Moinina Sengeh, Nadya Peek, Che-Wei Wang, Taylor Levy, Pau Ten, Jonathan Ward, Peter Schmitt, Nan-Wei Gong, Benjamin Mako Hill, Jean-Baptiste Labrune, Dana Gordon, Mark Feldmeier, Daniel Leithinger, Roy Shilkrot, Edwina Portocarrero, Marcelo Coelho, Dimitris Papanikolaou, David Cranor, and so many more. Thanks to Neil Gershenfeld, Hiroshi Ishii, Neri Oxman, and the rest of the Media Lab faculty for your inspiring research visions, and to Linda Peterson, Keira Horowitz, John DiFrancesco, Tom Lutz, Abisola Okuk, Karina Lundahl, Stephanie Gayle, Paula Aguilera, and all the others who make this place work. Thanks as well to Massimo Banzi, David Cuartielles, Tom Igoe, and the rest of the Arduino team for your collaboration and friendship over the past ten years. Finally, thank you to my family, for everything, and to Dena Molnar, for your love, support, and understanding during these past four years. Contents 1. Introduction 13 Contributions 18 Dissertation Roadmap 19 2. Background 21 Qualities of Craft, Mass Production, and Digital Fabrication 21 DIY and Hobbies 26 Electronic Kits 28 Today's Maker Movement 32 3. Related Work 37 Computational Making 37 Engaging People in Electronics 38 Interfaces for Digital Fabrication 43 Digital Fabrication of Interactive Objects 44 Technology and Craft / DIY 45 4. Personal Fabrication of Electronic Products 46 Comparison with Other Approaches to Making Electronics 47 Elements of Fabricated Electronic Products 50 Case Studies 60 General Principles 65 5. Do-It-Yourself Cellphone 69 Precedents and Related Work 70 The DIY Cellphone 71 Design Iterations 72 Design Reflections 76 Using the Phone in My Daily Life 79 Workshop 1: Designers 80 Workshop 2: General Public 86 Other Dissemination 90 6. Connected Devices 95 Workshop Preparation and Examples 96 Workshop Activities and Outcomes 102 Participant Trajectories & Profiles 104 Concepts, Skills, Practices 118 Value of DIY Electronics & Personal Fabrication 130 7. Discussion 138 What Are the Scope and Limits of the Personal Fabrication of Electronic Products? 138 How Can We Engage People in the Personal Fabrication of Electronic Products? 144 Why Make Electronic Products Using Personal Fabrication? 153 8. Conclusion 162 Recapitulation 162 Opportunities for Future Work 163 Ongoing Challenges 167 Fostering Agency and Empowerment? 168 References 170 1. Introduction Some things give us value through use. They serve a purpose, allow us to do things we couldn’t do otherwise, or to do them faster, better, easier. Other things provide us with an opportunity to exercise our creativity, to enjoy an experience, to develop our abilities. Making things for use in our own lives is a chance to combine these values. When we knit a hat, build a chair, or even just cook dinner, we exercise our creativity and invest meaning in an activity — but we also have something to keep us warm, a place to sit, and food to eat. In some areas of our lives, it’s difficult to combine these values. Today’s electronic products provide us with incredible value. With these devices, we can stay in touch, access information, and entertain ourselves wherever we are. And yet, while these products increasingly pervade our lives, most of us have little idea of how they’re made and almost no involvement in their production. This wasn’t always the case. In the 1950s and 60s, it wasn’t uncommon for technically-minded individuals to assemble their own products from do-it-yourself kits. These kits were often comparable in quality to commercial products and significantly cheaper. Assembling them for oneself involved similar processes and tools as the ones used in industry, just on a smaller scale. These kits didn’t necessarily provide much flexibility or creative freedom to the person assembling them — but at least they were an opportunity to participate in the process of making an electronic product. The complexity and sophistication of today’s electronic products — and the tools and processes used to assemble them — means that it’s no longer possible for individuals, no matter how skilled, to replicate these devices on their own. Instead, over the past three decades efforts to engage amateurs in working with electronics have frequently taken the form of toolkits, collections of higher-level physical modules which can be combined in a variety of configurations. These toolkits have a number of advantages. They encapsulate the underlying complexity of the electronic circuits involved. They facilitate tinkering by making it quick and easy to try out new configurations of modules. They provide a curated set of components which work well together and suggest possible uses. These properties make them well-suited to creative exploration and meaningful experiences. Toolkits, however, are less well-suited to the construction of products