THE CAUSE/COMMUNITY
Our primary community is a community of FabLab users, this can be
defined as a global community that uses MIT’S Fabrication Laboritories
to manufacture prototypes for personal innovation.
We identified seccondary communities which previous Fab Lab groups
targeted their specific projects at. These included: School children,
Gardeners or informal farmers and Weavers to name but a few.
THE BRIEF
In 2014 we were provided with past Fab Lab projects and asked to
test the feasability of these against the needs and requirements of
these against our primary and seccondary communities.
In other words we tested the previous projects to see weather or not
they could be remade in a Fab Lab, to see if they imparted the
knowledge and skills required of a Fab Lab poroject and to see if the
designed artifact met the needs and requirements of the secondary
community.
THE OUTPUTS
We produced a prototype that was manufactured in a Fab Lab
A comprehensive and refined set of instruction materials for each sub
project
A feasability report
THE EVALUATIONS
We foound that the feasability studies helped us to understand the
successers and failures of the previous projects
Students learnt the value of objective research to further critique the
successers and failures of a designed object
The Fab Lab project was responsible because it allowed the targeted
communities to be directly involved in the design process. Each
project was designed to further empart skills and knowledge to said
communities
Practical challenges that were encountered include:
Transport (Informal lift clubs were set up)
Communication (Mobile platforms served to address this)
Language barriers (Finding common grounds within languages)
Time constraints (Not addressed yet)