FAB13

Room 8

Digital fabrication and design technologies and expertise depend on one human sense, vision, ignoring other senses that could be shaped and used in learning to make. Moreover, pedagogical approaches in fab labs and maker spaces have not yet fully integrated these technologies as design companions; rather, they have been used primarily as tools for idea realization. This workshop introduces a multi-sensory computational model for human-machine making and learning. The model is based on a recursive process of embodied, situated, multi-sensory interaction between the learner, the machines and the thing-in-the-making. This approach depends heavily on computational making, abstracting and describing the making process. To demonstrate the effectiveness of this model, I present a case study from a course I taught recently, in which students built full-scale, lightweight structures with embedded electronics for interactions. This model creates a loop between design and construction that develops students’ sensory experience and spatial reasoning skills while at the same time enabling them to use digital technologies as design companions. The paper shows that making could be used to teach design enabling the students to make judgments on their own and improvise.