Building a Maker Community Around an Open Hardware Platform

Abstract

This paper reflects on the dynamics and practices of building a maker community around a new hardware platform. We examine the factors promoting the successful uptake of a maker platform from two perspectives: first, we investigate the technical and user experience considerations that users identify as the most important. Second, we explore the specific activities that help attract a community and encourage sustained participation. We present an inductive approach based on the case study of Bela, an embedded platform for creating interactive audio systems. The technical design and community building processes are detailed, culminating in a successful crowdfunding campaign. To further understand the community dynamics, the paper also presents an intensive three-day workshop with eight digital musical instrument designers. From observations and interviews, we reflect on the relationship between the platform and the community and offer suggestions for HCI researchers and practitioners interested in establishing their own maker communities.

Understanding the Use and Motivation of Digital Music Technologies among Middle-Aged and Older Adults

“…The quantitative data should be interpreted and contextualised alongside ethnographic and interview data obtained from our previous study and related literature [5,36]. As concerns the motivation of social connectedness, interviewees reported how they were "recruited" and attracted to local community music groups via established social networks.…”

“…However, influenced by the social and critical gerontology literature and the notion of "active ageing" [55], researchers recently suggest a more active way to reconfigure "the old age" in HCI. They argue that older adults are able to actively engage in social activities and give back to the community [5,36,37], so as to maintain social and physical wellbeing. Only considering age differences limits the scope of research and is not able to draw the whole picture of technology use.…”

The Design of Future Music Technologies

“…Communities of composers and performers can exhibit certain similar dynamics to maker communities, including sharing of ideas and building on one another's results." [7] "Digital musical instruments would seem to be a natural vehicle for studying playful interaction within HCI. Most musicians do not aspire to become professionals, and many do not perform in public at all.…”

Surfing with Sound

“…I'd started looking at issues relating to Autonomy and Control in music creation a while ago and had been researching algorithmic, generative and aleatoric composition [3] [4] when I came across noinput mixing whilst carrying out research [11] and running a workshop at STEIM 1 .…”