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The popularity of 3D printed assistive technology has led to the emergence of new ecosystems of care, where multiple stakeholders (makers, clinicians, and recipients with disabilities) work toward creating new upper limb prosthetic devices. However, despite the increasing growth, we currently know little about the differences between these care ecosystems. Medical regulations and the prevailing culture have greatly impacted how ecosystems are structured and stakeholders work together, including whether clinicians and makers collaborate. To better understand these care ecosystems, we interviewed a range of stakeholders from multiple countries, including Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, France, India, Mexico, and the U.S. Our broad analysis allowed us to uncover different working examples of how multiple stakeholders collaborate within these care ecosystems and the main challenges they face. Through our study, we were able to uncover that the ecosystems with multi-stakeholder collaborations exist (something prior work had not seen), and these ecosystems showed increased success and impact. We also identified some of the key follow-up practices to reduce device abandonment. Of particular importance are to have ecosystems put in place follow up practices that integrate formal agreements and compensations for participation (which do not need to be just monetary). We identified that these features helped to ensure multi-stakeholder involvement and ecosystem sustainability. We finished the paper with socio-technical recommendations to create vibrant care ecosystems that include multiple stakeholders in the production of 3D printed assistive devices.
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Towards Better Understanding Maker Ecosystems
This paper presents early work towards the development of a set of lenses for analyzing Maker ecosystems. By ecosystems, we mean the combination of hardware offered and web-presence that teaches/sells/builds community around that hardware, as well as the community of makers themselves. We analyzed 35 ecosystems, including well-known larger ones, as well as smaller, specialized environments. We present a set of key factors for consideration by anyone intending to use an ecosystem for a particular population or need in research, along with a set of examples of how these lenses can be applied for analysis. Key factors include: whether the ecosystem is open or closed, how they present onboarding materials that help users learn the platform, whether there is a growth path that supports continued learning and development, what they require or expect from users to participate, and the avenues of community development available for makers to share their work and knowledge.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2005816
- PAR ID:
- 10293037
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- FabLearn Europe / MakeEd 2021: FabLearn Europe / MakeEd 2021 - An International Conference on Computing, Design and Making in Education
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 4
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3466725.3466760
