CAREER: Enhancing the Integration of Craft and Computing

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

This research aims to advance fundamental understanding of the creative process in production-focused design and engineering. Today thousands of artists, designers, and crafts people use computing resources in their work, for example tutorials to prepare for production, 3D printers to generate custom prototypes, and open-source hardware toolkits to weave circuitry into physical artifacts. Although these developments have begun to shape the nature and organization of creative work, most tools to support these practices have not yet adapted to recent shifts by accounting for people's use of social media alongside digital tools for production. This research will enable the development of next-generation digital craft in three ways. Empirically, it unearths novel forms of expression emerging from the integration of computation and making. Theoretically, it will offer a conceptual framework that characterizes emergent forms of digital craft operating at the nexus of labor and leisure, digital and physical, and fabrication and reuse. For design, it will advance techniques for bridging social media and digital production across multiple social contexts. The first phase of the research will involve fieldwork and data analyses to understand current practices around making. Drawing on this empirical work, a conceptual framework will be developed for understanding new forms of creativity and engagement in digital craft. This conceptual framework will then be the basis for concrete systems that demonstrate the principles in different areas. The success of the developed methods will be evaluated through longitudinal field deployments. The investigation will contribute toward a long-term research program advancing reflexive, creative practices with digital technologies to promote responsible social change. It broadens growing bodies of research on materiality, aesthetic interaction and maker cultures to propose, build, and analyze new approaches to the shifting use of computational systems for creative activity. Central to the project is an educational plan to broaden and enhance design learning and class participation. A new graduate course on digital craft will teach students to use physical materials as an entry point for developing novel social technologies, application of developed techniques in an interdisciplinary undergraduate physical computing course to raise issues of collective social concern, and a workshop for middle school girls on physical computing for social change, including specific efforts to support participation of students from other underrepresented groups in learning engineering concepts. The tremendous potential for computer-assisted arts and crafts, as industries as well as avocations, implies that many careers will open up for students who are among the first to learn the necessary skills and principles.