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3D Printers as Sociable Technologies: Taking Appropriation Infrastructures to the Internet of Things

Authors:

Thomas Ludwig,

Alexander Boden,

Volkmar PipekAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Volume 24, Issue 2

Article No.: 17, Pages 1 - 28

https://doi.org/10.1145/3007205

Published: 11 April 2017 Publication History

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Abstract

3D printers have become continuously more present and are a perspicuous example of how technologies are becoming more complex and ubiquitous. To some extent, the emerging technological infrastructures around them exemplify ways how digitalization will change production machines and lines, in general, in the Internet of Things (IoT). From an End-User Development perspective, the main question is how users can be supported in managing those complex digital production lines. To reach a better understanding, we carefully analyzed 3D printers as an example of highly digitalized production machines with regard to the creative activities of their users that help them to make these machines work for their practices. In our study of appropriation processes, we are concerned with situational and social aspects of the configuration and practice challenges associated with making digitalization work and how IoT technologies can support these collaborative appropriation activities of end users by making these machines more “sociable.” We therefore conceptualize the idea of “Sociable Technologies” and implement a prototype that provides hardware-integrated affordances for communicating and documenting practices of usage. Based on the findings of our evaluation, we derive lessons learnt when aiming at making complex technologies more usable.

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Index Terms

3D Printers as Sociable Technologies: Taking Appropriation Infrastructures to the Internet of Things
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

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Reviews

Reviewer: CK Raju

Three-dimensional (3D) printing is often considered as an instance of disruptive technology that promises to change the way people think about materializing products for consumption. A study has been undertaken to identify existing weaknesses in 3D printing and to suggest areas to be newly configured and modified, which would eventually provide more teeth to this disruptive technology. The authors take inspiration from the emerging domain of the Internet of Things (IoT) and see how some of its advantages could be fused with 3D printing in order to make it simpler to design and develop models, and share the results. A social network of 3D printing is suggested as a better path for the evolution of this technology. The mapping of potential weak areas in the current state of the art of 3D printing is done by studying the practices adopted in two communities-one is predominantly an academic research community and the other is a community of artists. The authors find serious deficiencies in practices and usage behaviors in 3D printing, as well as in the documentation processes and knowledge sharing efforts. Having identified the weak areas, the research work proceeds to materialize an alternative approach by incorporating additional hardware changes to existing generic 3D printers. The main aims are to (1) identify configuration-related aspects associated with 3D printers; (2) generate contextual information for the purpose of real-time visualization; and (3) share 3D printing process details to a wider audience reachable via existing social networks like Twitter. To test the efficacy and efficiency of this modified sociable technology, the authors rely on the feedback of participants who were exposed to their newly constructed prototype of a sociable 3D printer. The positive responses affirm the authors' hypothesis that extending IoT facilities and integration with social networks would result in a new Internet of practices involving 3D printing. To criticize any part of this research work is undoubtedly a very difficult task. However, I do feel that the professional background of the participants involved for validating the newly constructed prototype is inadequate for the purpose of arriving at a generic conclusion. From the videos available in public domains like YouTube, and their popularity (view count), it is evident that the services of 3D printers are also keenly sought by professionals who want to reverse engineer costlier, patented, or even unlawful products-the details of which necessitate concealment of activities from the public. Online Computing Reviews Service

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cover image ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction Volume 24, Issue 2

Special Issue EUD for IoT

April 2017

284 pages

ISSN:1073-0516

EISSN:1557-7325

DOI:10.1145/3077620

Editor:
Ken Hinckley
Microsoft Research

Issue’s Table of Contents

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 11 April 2017

Accepted: 01 October 2016

Revised: 01 September 2016

Received: 01 April 2016

Published in TOCHI Volume 24, Issue 2

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