Resources, facilitation, and partnerships
Breanne Krystine Litts · 2015
As the maker movement proliferates, interaction design scholars and educators more commonly refer to makerspaces as learning environments and adopt making for more formal education. So far, researchers have primarily adopted an activity lens toward making, that is, they focus on making as an activity of learning, and in this paper I also consider community and identity lenses by examining makerspaces and maker identities. Specifically, I investigate the affordances and constraints of activity, identity, and community design features across youth makerspaces. I present a comparative case study across three youth makerspaces and offer three design considerations (managing resources, equipping facilitators, and establishing partnerships) that cut across these spaces. Drawing on these features as typical of youth makerspaces, I discuss implications for the design and support of makerspaces.