Exploring the Collaboration Possibilities of Distributed Making for Storytelling Using 3D Printing Pens
Amina H. El-Ashry, Xinran Zhang, Savani Shrotri, Susanna Abler, Foad Hamidi · 2021
As digital making tools, such as 3D printers and laser cutters, become more affordable and easier to use by non-experts, new opportunities arise for geographically distributed designers to use them collaboratively and at a distance. In this exploratory study, we investigated the possibilities of a 3D printing pen for collaboratively creating multimodal stories around the themes of ecology and climate change for elementary school-aged children. Our interdisciplinary team of four students met regularly over a video link and used shared documents and 3D pens to create a multimodal adventure book, with audio and tactile elements, that we then used as a design probe to elicit feedback from experienced community science educators working with children about the possibilities of using hands-on distributed collaborative techniques in the future. We found that using this approach is promising for facilitating creative verbal and visual collaboration at a distance, and using tactile and audio representations with narrative elements provides new ways to reflect on complex topics, such as climate change.