Making Examples and Making Connections

An experiment in helping Makerspace visitors understand, and connect example projects to the space

I have a table for examples at the front entry of my Makerspace:

It's a great place to land for folks who are just stopping by, who are new to the space, or who are looking for some inspiration. Examples help make the possibilities in the space concrete and tangible. I believe there's an art to good examples, but that's a topic for another post.

In my work here, and in other makerspaces, I noticed that examples were sometimes challenging for folks to interpret without background knowledge of the space and tools. An example might look cool, interesting, beautiful, but what is it? How was it made? Why is it here?

Examples can be so compelling! When I first launched my example display, I spent a lot of time answering questions about examples, describing each one, telling its story. Which is a wonderful and meaningful conversation to have, but I'm often balancing many plates and sometimes I don't have the ability to describe every example, in-depth, to a visitor.

So, I created a system for labeling examples. I thought about the way that specimens are displayed in museums or collections with individual identifying tags attached to the object.

image source: https://www.universityproducts.com/artifact-identification-tags.html 

I printed and laminated small labels and used some thin elastic cord to tie the tag to the object. Matte lamination sheets are easier to read than the traditional shiny sheets. (side note: this example/activity was introduced to me by friends at the InventHQ makerspace, thank you!)

I added an extra touch to the labels. I created small stickers using the Cricut's "print and cut" feature and some printable sticker paper. I cut one sticker by hand (you can tell which one it was) and decided that wasn't going to have the nice polished appearance I wanted, the Cricut really was the way to go. The stickers correspond to the labels I have displayed throughout the space.

The idea being that someone could pick up an example, walk around the space, and begin to get a sense of how the example was made. Or at least, what the machines look like that created the example.

Some special tags have photos on them to show the example in context, like this 3D printed hydroponic plant pot. I also cut some fake plant leaves out of paper and placed them in the pot to help visitors understand the purpose of this otherwise somewhat abstract object.

There's room for improvement. Spanish is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the area I'm in. It would be great to have labels with both Spanish and English text.