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In this overview paper, we consider interactive digital narratives (IDN) as a means to represent and enable understanding of complex topics both at the public level (e.g. global warming, the COVID-19 pandemic, migration, or e-mobility) and at the personal level (trauma and other mental health issues, interpersonal relationships). We discuss scholarly approaches to complexity, limitations of traditional media to represent complex issues, and describe the potential of IDN in this regard and what aspects need further work in research and beyond, which serve as the starting point for the EU COST action INDCOR.

This paper analyses a series of events in which a discarded box found in a garbage room is examined and taken apart in the context of a makerspace. The participants' inquiry provided a rich and multifaceted experience in various settings, including puzzle-solving, exploring physical and digital materials, engaging people with different skills. The social engagements with and around the artifacts brought certain interpretative aspects to the fore. Situated acts of interpretation worked as ways of building a coherent narrative and a meaningful experience. In the paper, we highlight the relationship between on the one hand the subjects' skills and motivations to understand and make sense of the technology at hand which we call material literacy, and on the other hand the specific material qualities that encourage or trigger certain interpretations and experiences. The qualities we discuss are: opacity, risk, authenticity, uniqueness, age, and hybridity. This study allows us to reposition the contemporary understanding of makerspaces beyond that of being places for innovation and learning.

This paper offers a conceptual contribution to understand 3D printing practice. We have studied conversations between 3D printing practitioners who discuss failed and discarded printed artifacts and analyzed how they make sense of the printing process. Based on findings of interactions with the machine itself, materials used, and designs applied, this study contributes to the field of HCI by highlighting the embodied and situated dimensions of 3D printing. Introducing the concept of machine sensibility, we characterize our findings around: i) assessing printability, ii) monitoring and intervening and iii) reading the prints. We use the term machine to highlight the importance of understanding the materiality of the 3D printer, and sensibility, to address critical interactions and abilities that surfaced in studying this practice. The concept allows researchers to put 3D printing practice in the context of contemporary interaction design research and helps to understand challenges of material-machine-design interdependencies.

This paper offers a conceptual contribution to understand 3D printing practice. We have studied conversations between 3D printing practitioners who discuss failed and discarded printed artifacts and analyzed how they make sense of the printing process. Based on findings of interactions with the machine itself, materials used, and designs applied, this study contributes to the field of HCI by highlighting the embodied and situated dimensions of 3D printing. Introducing the concept of machine sensibility, we characterize our findings around: i) assessing printability, ii) monitoring and intervening and iii) reading the prints. We use the term machine to highlight the importance of understanding the materiality of the 3D printer, and sensibility, to address critical interactions and abilities that surfaced in studying this practice. The concept allows researchers to put 3D printing practice in the context of contemporary interaction design research and helps to understand challenges of material-machine-design interdependencies.

This paper offers a conceptual contribution to understand 3D printing practice. We have studied conversations between 3D printing practitioners who discuss failed and discarded printed artifacts and analyzed how they make sense of the printing process. Based on findings of interactions with the machine itself, materials used, and designs applied, this study contributes to the field of HCI by highlighting the embodied and situated dimensions of 3D printing. Introducing the concept of machine sensibility, we characterize our findings around: i) assessing printability, ii) monitoring and intervening and iii) reading the prints. We use the term machine to highlight the importance of understanding the materiality of the 3D printer, and sensibility, to address critical interactions and abilities that surfaced in studying this practice. The concept allows researchers to put 3D printing practice in the context of contemporary interaction design research and helps to understand challenges of material-machine-design interdependencies.

This paper offers a conceptual contribution to understand 3D printing practice. We have studied conversations between 3D printing practitioners who discuss failed and discarded printed artifacts and analyzed how they make sense of the printing process. Based on findings of interactions with the machine itself, materials used, and designs applied, this study contributes to the field of HCI by highlighting the embodied and situated dimensions of 3D printing. Introducing the concept of machine sensibility, we characterize our findings around: i) assessing printability, ii) monitoring and intervening and iii) reading the prints. We use the term machine to highlight the importance of understanding the materiality of the 3D printer, and sensibility, to address critical interactions and abilities that surfaced in studying this practice. The concept allows researchers to put 3D printing practice in the context of contemporary interaction design research and helps to understand challenges of material-machine-design interdependencies.

This paper offers a conceptual contribution to understand 3D printing practice. We have studied conversations between 3D printing practitioners who discuss failed and discarded printed artifacts and analyzed how they make sense of the printing process. Based on findings of interactions with the machine itself, materials used, and designs applied, this study contributes to the field of HCI by highlighting the embodied and situated dimensions of 3D printing. Introducing the concept of machine sensibility, we characterize our findings around: i) assessing printability, ii) monitoring and intervening and iii) reading the prints. We use the term machine to highlight the importance of understanding the materiality of the 3D printer, and sensibility, to address critical interactions and abilities that surfaced in studying this practice. The concept allows researchers to put 3D printing practice in the context of contemporary interaction design research and helps to understand challenges of material-machine-design interdependencies.

This paper offers a conceptual contribution to understand 3D printing practice. We have studied conversations between 3D printing practitioners who discuss failed and discarded printed artifacts and analyzed how they make sense of the printing process. Based on findings of interactions with the machine itself, materials used, and designs applied, this study contributes to the field of HCI by highlighting the embodied and situated dimensions of 3D printing. Introducing the concept of machine sensibility, we characterize our findings around: i) assessing printability, ii) monitoring and intervening and iii) reading the prints. We use the term machine to highlight the importance of understanding the materiality of the 3D printer, and sensibility, to address critical interactions and abilities that surfaced in studying this practice. The concept allows researchers to put 3D printing practice in the context of contemporary interaction design research and helps to understand challenges of material-machine-design interdependencies.

Three-dimensional printing is widely celebrated as enabling open design and manufacturing practice. With easy-to-use techniques such as automated modeling, fabrication machines ostensibly help designers turn ideas into fully fledged objects. Prior HCI literature focuses on improving printing through optimization and by developing printer and material capabilities. This paper expands such considerations by asking, how do 3D printing practitioners understand and create “printability?” And how might HCI better support the work that holds together printing workflows and changing ecosystems of materials and techniques? We conducted studies in two sites of open design: a technology firm in Silicon Valley, California and a makerspace in Stockholm, Sweden. Deploying workshops and interviews, we examine how practitioners negotiate the print experience, revealing a contingent process held together by trial and error exploration and careful interventions. These insights point to the value of tools and processes to support articulation work, what Strauss and colleagues have called the acts of fitting together people, tasks, and their ordering to accomplish an overarching project. We show that despite the sought-after efficiencies of such manufacturing, 3D printing entails articulation work, particularly acts of alignment, exposing messy modes of production carried out by a varied cast of practitioners, machines, and materials.

What happens when scholars approach novel phenomena such as Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN)? How can we be certain that theoretical frameworks, analytical approaches, and vocabulary are adequate,which means that they are able to fully describe the specific characteristics of the novel phenomena? The same goes for approaches in the practice - how can we be sure that the chosen design methods enable the use of the full expressive potential of a novel phenomena? Furthermore, we ask how we can critique and improve categories and approaches? We reflect on how theory and analytical approaches have been produced so far, identify issues with the current practice, consider alternatives and propose a number of measures to improve the situation. Amongst them are increased efforts on the meta-level in terms of theoretical development and reflective works which concern themselves with the further development of the field, iterative approaches towards theory and method, a more critical approach in education, multi-method analysis, and dynamic representations.

Making has with its mindset and hands-on agenda found ways into all levels of education. From primary school to higher education, in after-school curricula and public places of learning, making has made a considerable impact. In early childhood education, teachers and their professional development are however less in focus. We present a municipality-driven project of training nine preschool teachers with a maker mindset. Our data builds on teachers’ experience and practice, shared in two workshops and 16 blog posts. The pedagogues’ reflections of their own and learners’ actions make way for how ‘making’ impacts them as educators. We use Resnick’s four P’s: Projects, Peers, Passion, Play and contribute Places and Presentation as additional elements of creative learning. We show that developing a maker mindset entails openness, curiosity, co-creation, responsiveness and the willingness to include technology and materials into professional practice, which is key towards becoming a maker pedagogue.