Making It Work—Experiences of Women Who Engage in Technological Making at Home

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a 5-month diary study into the practices and routines that develop around technological making in the home, particularly focused on the experiences of women, as they continue to be an underrepresented group in the maker community. In this study, we provided participants with an entry-level electronics making kit. Over the course of twenty weeks, the participants documented their making activities via photos, videos, text messages and taking part in interviews. By means of interpretative phenomenological analysis, we identified six core themes related to women’s experiences with technological making in the home. These experiences ranged from positive—feeling challenged, proud of accomplishments, inspired; to negative—feeling frustrated, guilty due to lack of progress or confused and overwhelmed. These experiences are discussed and contextualized by aspects related to hurdles experienced by the participants, and success factors that contribute to proactive engagement with making in the home.

Research Highlights

• Twenty-week photo diary study and interpretative phenomenological analysis.

• Identification of six core themes based on empirical data on experiences with technological making in the home context.

• Discourse around thresholds to engage women in technological making and the maker community.

• Design and research directions to reduce barriers in technological making.

1 Introduction

In recent years, technology-related making, Maker Culture and the associated Maker Movement have increasingly received attention in the global public sphere. The maker movement started gaining traction in popular culture in 2005, but is actually an evolution of the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) movement of the 1980s (Gollihue, 2019, p. 13). When considering who has access to technological making and making communities, it is important to realize that technological making is not simply a neutral activity supported by digital and technological tools. It is, like all forms of technology, entangled with patriarchal capitalism (Haraway, 1985). Despite its credo of being open and welcoming to anyone (Eckhardt et al., 2021) women¹ are underrepresented in the Maker Movement (Faulkner, 2014, Voigt et al., 2017), just as women are underrepresented in technology-related professions (Eckhardt et al., 2021), and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields (Rattaro et al., 2020).

The reasons for the gender gap in participation in technological making are broad and complex. A frequently perpetuated view is that women are simply naturally ‘less interested’ in technology than men. However, interests are not developed in a ‘societal vacuum’ (Lewis, 2015), and it is likely that differing interests are caused by differing opportunities to experience particular activities: if there is never a trigger, interest can hardly be sparked (Park & Siklander, 2018). Furthermore, women are often not counted as ‘makers’ (Faulkner, 2014) or hesitate to describe themselves as such, because of the type of making they do (França et al., 2021) or the lack of connection to the prevalent identity of ‘makers’ (Chachra & Am, 2015). Due to the strong focus on digital tools, and monetization of that which is made, the making that many women do engage in—art, craft, generational making (Eckhardt et al., 2021)—is devalued within the Maker Movement (Gollihue, 2019). Being discounted as makers results in women feeling less welcome in maker communities and makerspaces (Henry, 2014).

Furthermore, even if women wanted to participate in technological making, they have less time to do so: women spend, on average, two to four hours more than their male counterparts per day on unpaid work, such as child care, household tasks, elder care and organizational tasks (Criado-Perez, 2019, p.137). This time cannot be spent on learning new skills, exploring hobbies and attending makerspaces. In addition, women tend to avoid makerspaces and communities dominated by men (Bean et al., 2015). Men often interpret different working styles that women might display (such as sketching and thinking) as a sign that they need help, when this is not the case (Faulkner & McClard, 2014, Henry, 2014). Moreover, many (male-dominated) makerspaces are perceived as chaotic, disorganized and unhygienic, which can make these spaces less welcoming and usable for women (Bean et al., 2015).

Feminist makerspaces started as an alternative for those who were tired of fighting the discord of mainstream makerspaces: ‘[...] the conflicts over the meaning of openness; difficulties in recognizing and acknowledging privileges along the lines of gender, race, ethnicity and class; and patriarchal behaviours [...]’ (Toupin, 2014, p. 5).

The resulting gender gap in engagement with technological making and STEM related activities is not only a problem for women who would like to participate in these activities, but also the resulting untapped contributions that women could provide in technological and scientific fields (Lewis, 2015). Improving access to STEM fields for underrepresented populations is therefore also a societal and economic matter, as exclusion from making not only results in unharvested knowledge, but also seals the potentials of making ‘as sites of urban vitalism, reconfiguring production and consumption in more democratic, inclusive and sustainable ways’ (Brandellero & Niutta, 2023, p. 1).

Engaging with technological making provides opportunities to develop skills in engineering and design, and people couple making with an understanding of themselves as engineers and technologists (Cipolla, 2019, p.264). Long-term engagement in the maker movement has also shown that this can positively influence subjective well-being (Collier & Wayment, 2018), make participants more aware of the environmental impact (Mylonas et al., 2021) and make participants more confident in their design skills (Hilton et al., 2018). Furthermore, many studies show that participation in makerspaces can evolve habits of design thinking and problem-solving skills (Kessner et al., 2021); fostering Do-It-Yourself-skills for life (Resnick, 2007), and growing the next generation of designers and innovators (Honey & Kanter, 2013).

Previous research has shown that participation in makerspaces, for example, in workshop settings, leads to an increase in maker activities in the home (Capel et al., 2021). The type of informal, project-driven activities that are associated with everyday engagement in making have the ability to interconnect with multiple places, such as the home and the makerspace (Einarsson, 2021). Making in the safe surroundings of their own home could combat thresholds that currently deter women from participating in makerspaces, by mitigating the fear of failure many women experience when engaging with technological making (Bean et al., 2015) or the feeling of not being ‘techie’ enough (França et al., 2021).

While there is a considerable body of knowledge around women’s experiences of making within institutionalized makerspaces, women’s technological making at home has been less focused on in research. We aim to fill this gap by researching technological making activities in the home context to find ways to improve the at-home maker’s experience, even more so as making at home has increased considerably during COVID-19. Conducting a remote study was not only the best choice to account for the circumstances induced by this global pandemic, but, independent from these conditions, also reflected the intimate confines of making at home best. Not interfering physically with participants’ making at home seemed most appropriate to investigate the spatial arrangements and the social practices that developed (or did not develop).

In this work, we aim to answer the following research questions:

1. What strategies do women employ to successfully explore technological making in the home?

2. What characterizes the difficulties women experience when experimenting with technological making at home?

We describe a photo diary study, performed over a period of twenty weeks, with twelve participants, conducted in Western Europe. Through this study, we will identify the barriers and issues that women engaging with technological making run into, and how those problems were solved. The women who participated in the study all engaged with a ready-made kit, designed to introduce novices to physical computing. By performing an interpretative phenomenological analysis of the data collected during the diary study and the semi-structured interviews conducted at the end of the study, we identified six core themes related to participants’ experiences with technological making in the home: (1) Time Investment & Mental Effort to Work on the Kit, (2) Positive Aspects of the Kit: Guidance & Challenges, (3) Disappointing Experiences with the Kit—In-Depth Guidance, Projects & Guilt, (4) Engaging Beyond the Guide Book, (5) Effect of Social Interaction on Engagement with the Kit and (6) The Interplay between Workplace & Work Routines. We will report on these findings in Chapter 4 and further discuss them in Chapter 5, in relation to time and space, meaningful interactions and community aspects when making at home to identify implications for future design.

1.1 Positionality Statement

We position this research as feminist research in the Human-Computer Interaction domain. By including a positionality statement (Campbell, 2009), we want to emphasize that we are aware of our subjective standpoints and continuously critically reflect on these while conducting this research (England, 1994). The study was conducted by the first and second authors of this paper. The first author is a white, cis-gender man who was born and raised in Central Europe, and has lived and worked in Central Europe ever since. He self-identifies as a maker and is experienced in making both in his private and professional life. The second author is a white, cis-gender woman, who has continually lived in Central and Northern Europe. She has experience using makerspaces in several European countries for work, and occasionally engages with technological making and crafting in her free time. The first and second author contributed equally to this paper. The third author, a Latin-American, cis-gender woman who lived most of her life in South America but has her research experience rooted in the United States and Central Europe, supported the first and second author in the analysis of the data and writing. She considers herself a maker and engages with (tech and non-tech) making activities both at work and at home. The fourth author of the paper, whose role was to guide the research activities and embed them in the larger research project, is a cis-gender woman, who has been continually living and working in Central Europe. She does not consider herself a maker, rather an occasional crafter who is personally and professionally worried about the gender gap in making. The fifth author is a cis-gender, white man, who leads the research centres at which this research was conducted. He was responsible for quality assurance throughout the study.

2 Related Work

The technological gender gap has been studied for decades (e.g. Canada & Brusca (1991), Hesse-Biber & Gilbert (1994)) and while many initiatives, projects and strategies have been applied in an attempt to close it, the gender gap persists in all areas of STEM (Wang & Degol, 2017). In fact, if current trends continue in the field of computer science, the gender gap is unlikely to close in the next 100 years (Wang et al., 2021). Motivated by this fact, significant efforts are continually being made to investigate, bridge and close the gender gap (e.g. Ballatore et al. (2019), Borsotti (2018), Köppe & Bartilla (2017), Rheingans et al. (2018), Verdugo-Castro et al. (2019)).

2.1 Increasing Women’s Participation in STEM and Making

Several approaches to increase women’s engagement in STEM field have been implemented. For example, organizing STEM activities in a low-pressure way, outside the educational context, has been shown to increase engagement (Donmez, 2021). Further, introducing women to physical computing by means of, e.g. the Raspberry Pi platform also increases interest in STEM fields (Hallak et al., 2019). In related work, certain barriers towards makerspaces were identified and suggestions for reducing such barriers were made.

Roldan et al. (2017) provided design principles (i.e. member assessment, perspective taking, signals of approachability, structured help-seeking and credentialing) to support a positive sense of community in university makerspaces. Noel et al. (2016) addressed a lack of (perceived) experience by providing equipment training sessions, promoted inclusion through group events and made efforts to diversify their workshop program to cultivate the various interests among their participants. In a similar direction, Okerlund et al. (2018) described a disruptive event called ‘Statement Making’—a maker fashion show—which aimed to diversify a university makerspace. The aforementioned related work tried to decrease barriers in makerspaces on an organizational level. revIn this work we try to reduce barriers on an individual level by, e.g. sparking interest, growing confidence and expertise and removing the social pressure that comes with the makerspace context. We therefore focus on the home context in this paper, and follow the idea of sparking interest in making by providing entry-level, ready-made electronic making kits to women (Hallak et al., 2019).

2.2 Technological Making Meets Crafting

Beyond involving women in traditional forms of technological making, the integration of technological making with activities that women are already engaged in is just as, if not more, important (Buechley et al., 2008). After finding that, while e.g. electronics makers are overwhelmingly male, but gender distribution in crafts, such as sewing or painting, was much more equal or skewed towards women makers (Buechley & Perner-Wilson, 2012), many projects were initiated to combine crafts with technological making, such as: soft circuitry (Khan et al., 2019), e-embroidery (Gowrishankar & Mikkonen, 2013), technology-embedded weaving (Devendorf & Di Lauro, 2019, Stewart et al., 2018) and e-textiles in general (Buechley et al., 2008, Hill et al., 2021, Posch & Fitzpatrick, 2018, Posch et al., 2019).

For the study described in this paper, we provided participants with one of two kits: the Arduino Uno-based Sparkfun Inventor’s Kit² (see Fig. 1), hereafter referred to as the Sparkfun Kit. The Sparkfun Kit a standard kit, including a microcontroller prototyping board, for people who are starting out with physical computing—and the Arduino Lilypad-based Flora Starter Kit³ (see Fig. 2), hereafter referred to as the Flora Kit. The Lilypad microcontroller that is included in the Flora Kit is commonly used in the creation of e-textiles, which is the only field of technological making in which women are the dominant group (Buchholz et al., 2014).

We provided these two kits to investigate participants’ responses to the different types of materials and tutorials. Posch et al. argue that toolkits are ‘[...]important for the general shaping and understanding of the practice beyond highly specialized research agendas.’ (Posch et al., 2019, p. 195). Hannah Perner-Wilson argues that conventional kits of parts ‘[...] constrains us to particular styles of building, influencing what we build as well as impacting how we come to think about electronics.’ (Perner-Wilson, 2011, p. 2) Based on this argument, Hannah Perner-Wilson proposes ‘A Kit-of-No-Parts’. Following the study at hand, and especially participants’ responses to the kits, we will discuss considerations for future developments of technological making kits.

2.3 Spaces and Workshops for Women

While the combination of craft and electronics has been successful in engaging more women in technological making, attempts have also been made to involve more women in ‘mainstream’ making activities by limiting the influence of discouraging factors in the Maker Movement. For example, many women-only makerspaces have emerged (Capel et al., 2020, Fox, 2015, Hedditch & Vyas, 2021, Savić & Wuschitz, 2018, Toupin, 2014). In these spaces, which often incorporate values of intersectional feminism (Henry, 2014), women can more easily enter without having to defend the kind of making they engage with, or how they engage with it (Toupin, 2013). Women-only spaces can make visitors safe from harassment, abuse and misogyny, while they feel safe to express themselves cognitively, intellectually and emotionally (Lewis et al., 2015). Aside from spaces specifically for women, many makerspaces and maker communities organize workshops and courses specifically for women or girls (Fox, 2015, Rattaro et al., 2020). Women-only workshops support participants in feeling both competent and confident in their skills (Capel et al., 2021), while creating a safe space to fail (Armitage, 2018).

Making is not only bound to institutionalized makerspaces. Non-technological making, for instance, has been an activity at home ever since, as group or solitary activity (Corkhill et al., 2014), and so has technological making also found its way into individual homes. Initially driven by the decreasing costs of fabrication machinery and the broad availability of prototyping tools, such as microcomputers, it has been COVID-19 that further propelled making at home. Research has investigated some of the related phenomena; for instance, Jones et al. reported a study about crafting tangible interfaces at home, to be used at home. In contrast to the study at hand, they provided the participants with a design brief, and in a user-centered manner, their approach included phases of ideation, prototyping and evaluation (Jones et al., 2023). Shewbridge and colleagues explored the use of 3D printers at home (Shewbridge et al., 2014), and others focused on teaching digital fabrication remotely, such as Benabdallah et al., who investigated university courses on digital fabrication at a distance (Benabdallah et al., 2021), or Boll et al., who reported their experiences with teaching a hardware-oriented course remotely during COVID-19 (Boll et al., 2020). In a study about minoritized youth in Chicago, Peppler et al. unveiled that the home played an important role in their low-tech making projects, and suggested five levels of learning to make at home that range from being exposed at home to making activities only marginally to making together (Kylie et al., 2020). Similar to our study, they aimed to understand making activities without providing a particular brief. Unlike our study though, they focused on learning and the role that other family members played therein, while we aim to understand the diversity of strategies and how to support those better for making at home.

We see the home context as a valuable safe space in which women can experiment with technology and get confident in their abilities, prior to approaching makerspaces. We believe that prior contact with making at home can reduce the entrance barrier for visiting makerspaces.

2.4 Making with a Purpose

While creating safe, welcoming environments for women is an often used approach, the type of making that is offered in workshops, presented in tutorials or demonstrated in existing maker communities is important as well. The pervasive, neoliberal focus on valorization (making commercial products) in the Maker Movement is often less appealing to women (Chachra & Am, 2015). Research shows that girls are more invested in technological making when the activity is ‘framed as a set of practices, skills, and technologies to connect with one’s community’ (Holbert, 2016, p. 79). At the centre of many of the activities that makers engage in, is the generative process of developing a personally meaningful idea (Bevan et al., 2015). Shaer & Tosca (2021) also found that having students work on a personally meaningful project that addresses design challenges that impact them resulted in a high level of motivation and participation. It is worth considering that what is personally meaningful for those who are ubiquitously represented in the Maker Movement (highly educated, white, cis-men) is not personally meaningful to other, underrepresented, groups.

Based on these considerations, we did not instruct participants to interact in a certain way with the kit. In the introduction call, participants were informed that whatever they do with the kit is a valuable contribution to our research, therefore leaving space for participants to partake in projects that were meaningful to them.

3 Method

To gather insights into the activities, routines, strategies and barriers women develop when engaging with technological making in the home, we conducted a photo diary study with a technology probe (Sparkfun Kit or Flora Kit) as a trigger.

The study was conducted between September 2020 and January 2021. This timeframe allowed us to investigate the impacts of engagement with technological making over time—an aspect of this research area that has been underexposed due to a predominant focus on shorter-term studies (Keune et al., 2019). We like to emphasize that the study was already planned as a remote study to investigate participants’ engagement with making in the context of home before COVID became a worldwide concern and impact. However, it is inevitable that COVID influenced the used method and also most likely had an influence on the outcome of the study. . At the end of October 2020, Austria (where most of the participants were located) went into a second lockdown: where possible, people were asked to work from home, and all stores and public locations, except for post offices, banks and supermarkets, were closed. The conditions for our study were, hence, partly defined by these circumstances, requiring us to realize a fully remote study, without any on-site (de-)briefing sessions, and with participants potentially making at home more often than before the pandemic (this is not necessarily a limitation though, as we discuss in the limitations section). At the same time, the set of remote studies has been refined during the pandemic, providing us with rich opportunities to choose from.

3.1 Recruitment & Onboarding

Participants were recruited through mailing lists, newsletters and social media posts. The call for participation stated that we were looking for participants who would be interested in contributing to a research project and want to get involved with technological making from the context of their home by independently experimenting with the Flora Kit or the Sparkfun Kit. Furthermore, we communicated the following criteria: participants should self-identify as female, have little to no experience with the Arduino Microcontroller Platform and should be willing to regularly report their experiences with the kit.

We selected participants between the ages of 18 and 40. Based on literature, we expected that within this age range, general technology literacy would be well-established (Calvo-Porral & Pesqueira-Sanchez, 2020), which would support participants’ successful participation in this study. However, we note that this selection of participants also results in a limitation of the study—see section 5.5.

When signing up to participate in the study, participants could state a preference for receiving a Flora Kit or a Sparkfun Kit. Afterwards, a package containing the participant’s preferred kit, an informed consent form, an information booklet, a booklet to collect the participant’s demographic data and a booklet with questions about the participant’s overall experience were mailed out. All participants that indicated a preference for a specific kit, received that kit. Participants who did not indicate a preference were randomly assigned a kit with the purpose of balancing the sample, resulting in equal numbers of participants working with the Flora Kit or the Sparkfun Kit, respectively.

After receiving the package, the study started with an introductory phone call with each participant to explain the study procedure and answer any questions the participant may have. Communication and collection of diary entries (text, photos, videos) was done by using the open source messenger Signal.⁴ We also used the Signal messenger to remind participants to share messages, photos and videos whenever they had not sent anything for more than two weeks without notice and to inform participants about practicalities around the study. One participant was unable to install Signal on her phone. She sent her diary entries to us via email.

3.2 Participants

Twelve people participated in the diary study. An overview of their characteristics is presented in Table 1. All participants self-identified as women. The age range of the participants was between 19 and 39 years (mean: 32, sd: 6,28). All participants spoke German as a first language, but felt comfortable enough with the English language to use the English instruction guides that came with the kits. Eleven participants were located in Austria, one participant was located in England during the study. Seven participants either had a university degree (P1, P5, P6, P8, P11) or were enrolled as students (P4, P7) at the time of the study.

All participants came to the study with some previous experience in making—although several participants would describe it as tinkering (German: Basteln) (P2, P3, P6, P07) or ‘playing around’ (P6) rather than using the term ‘making’. Previous making activities that participants engaged in include furniture construction and woodwork (P1, P2, P5, P8, P9, P11), repairing or sewing clothes and other textiles (P1, P2, P3, P5, P6, P8, P11) and painting and paper crafts (P4, P5, P7, P11). Four participants (P2, P5, P11 and P12) stated that they used making-related skills in their education or job. P11 and P12 stated that they had an artistic background. Eight participants (P1, P2, P5, P7, P8, P9, P10, P11) were not part of any makerspace at the time of the study, however, P10 mentioned being a member previously, but not currently. Only one participant (P3) was an active member of a makerspace during the study. However, apart from being engaged with rapid prototyping machinery (P5, P6), none of the participants had any experience with technology-based projects. This made the participants excellent candidates to integrate technological making into making activities that they were already involved in (Buechley et al., 2008).

Two participants (P1 and P3) had no prior programming experience. Seven participants (P2, P5, P6, P7, P8, P9, P11) had prior programming experience ranging from basics in Matlab (P5), basics in Python (P9, P11) and ‘some Linux skills’ (P8); to formal coding training in university (P6), school (P7) or job-training (P2).

Recovering and expanding on these existing programming skills, and finally implementing technology in their creative projects, was one of the main motivations mentioned by participants taking part in the study: P6, P7, P10, P11 and P12 all mentioned that they had ‘always wanted to start with Arduino’, but never got around to it. For them, the study presented itself as an opportunity or even an ‘excuse to get started’ (P10).

Although several participants had experience with programming, the participants did not have the interest, or the skill, to connect this to the creative, often craft-based, analogue-making that many of the participants engaged in prior to the study. While all participants had some experience with tangible creative expressions (such as sewing, furniture construction or sculpting), none of the participants had ever physically tinkered with technology (e.g. repairing an appliance, building an electrical circuit, soldering).

3.3 Online Social Events

We offered two online get-together events during which participants could meet with each other and discuss the kits, present their projects and the progress they had (or had not) been making. We would like to emphasize that the online social events were not initially in the study plan, but the idea for them was brought up by participants during the kick-off telephone calls. The online get-together events took place in December 2020 and January 2021.

3.4 Data Collection

Our diary study included a set of diverse data collection methods to account for participants’ different documentation practices and preferences, and to establish contact among participant and researcher while being distant. Basic demographic data (age, self-identified gender identity) was collected during the screening for participants. The information was confirmed during the study through questions in the demographic data collection booklet.

In order to collect demographic data and to provide an opportunity to reflect immediately after the end of the study, we created two booklets for the participants to fill in and send back at the end of the study: a booklet collecting their demographic data, and information about their affinity to making and technology, and a ‘wrap-up booklet’ documenting their experiences with the kit. With the demographic data booklets, we collected information on background and prior experience: makerspace membership, the highest form of education, experience in making and experience in coding. As we did not receive booklets from 3 participants (P04, P10 and P12) this data is missing for these 3 participants. The reason for using booklets was to playfully guide participants in describing themselves and reflecting on their experiences without the researcher being present.

The actual diary entries were collected via the open-source messenger Signal and consisted of photos, videos or text messages. We decided the diary to be digital for two reasons. First, we wanted to enable the participants to document and report in a convenient way by relying on familiar means of sharing experiences. Second, doing so allowed us to be in touch easily to send reminders, ask questions or answer participants’ questions.

We also invited all participants to take part in a semi-structured interview to gain further insight in their experiences, find answers to questions that were raised based on their diary entries in Signal and answer any questions that the participants may have. These interviews addressed the participant’s workplace setup, social strategies for learning and problem-solving, their future plans with the kit and whether they were satisfied with their interactions with the kit.

Completing these interviews was especially valuable in relation to participants who did not send many or any messages during the study. The interviews were all conducted online using the open source software Jitsi.⁵

As the study took place over the course of twenty weeks, responses of the participants ebbed and flowed. If a participant had not sent any updates for two weeks, one of the researchers would send a reminder to the participant (unless extenuating circumstances, such as illness or stressful periods at work/home were known). We received a substantial amount of data to analyse from each participant, although not all participants joined us for the interviews, and not all participants mailed back the booklets. An overview of the participants and which data we received for analysis is presented in Table 1. All linguistic data (chat messages, booklet answers and interviews) were originally collected in the German language. We therefore do not directly quote the data or participants, but instead offer translations of the data and participants’ statements.

3.5 Data Analysis

All data collected in the study—chat messages, photographs, videos, interview notes, study booklets—were analysed by means of an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) (Smith & Osborn, 2007). IPA concerns itself with a ‘detailed examination of the participant’s life-world’ (Smith & Osborn, 2007, p. 53). A successfully executed interpretative phenomenological analysis positions the findings that were understood from the data in a wider social, cultural and theoretical context and allows the researcher to think about the data in a speculative manner (Larkin et al., 2006). This focus on personal perception in the analysis of research data relates well to the feminist idea that all attempts at knowledge acquisition and structuring are socially situated (Bardzell, 2010), including gendered experience (Young, 1980). Fair science—rather than objective science—should take into account what is meaningful from a particular standpoint of a particular person (Campbell, 2009): a detailed examination of the participants life-world (Smith & Osborn, 2007).

As the aim of this study is to identify the unique experiences of women who want to independently get involved with technological making from the context of their own homes, IPA is especially well-suited. IPA allows for an analytic focus on the ‘person-in-context’ (Larkin et al., 2006, Leve et al., 2012) to understand how the participants in this study ‘explor[e], describ[e], interpret[...], and [...] make sense of their experiences’ (Larkin et al., 2006, p.110). IPA is a flexible, six-step process, during which researchers 1) read and re-read the collected data of one case; 2) take initial notes; 3) develop themes; 4) search for connections across emergent themes; 5) move on to the next case; and 6) look for patterns across cases.

3.6 Developing Themes

The sixth step of the IPA process (i.e. looking for patterns across cases) was supported by affinity diagramming. The two researchers who coded all data merged their notes into one set of 534 notes. The majority of these themes were formulated in English, but the researchers included some linguistic comments in the original language of the data (German). By means of the iterative process described by Holtzblatt et al. (2004, p. 159-179), the researchers clustered the 534 notes with the help of a third, independent researcher, who was also tasked with checking the assumptions and preconceptions of the two researchers who had executed the study. Themes were coded as pink core themes, green clusters and blue categories as suggested in Holtzblatt et al. (2004, p. 159-179)). During the analysis, the researchers were spatially separated. Therefore, for the affinity diagram, the online tool Miro,⁶ in combination with an ongoing video-call, was used. The researchers completed the diagram over the course of several days.

4 Results

Overall we received 179 visual messages (photos or videos) from participants, but the variance between participants was high, ranging from 76 photos and 24 videos to no photos or videos (see table 1). Participant 1 took part in the study by means of Email, rather than Signal Messenger, which may have influenced the number of messages, photos and videos received. Some participants sent fewer than five visual messages via Signal, and two participants did not send any photos or videos at all. However, all the participants who sent fewer than five messages via Signal, did take part in the semi-structured interviews at the end of the study. Nine out of twelve participants also sent back the filled-in booklets. Therefore, all participant data were included in the analysis.⁷ During the process of affinity diagramming, these themes were clustered and then categorized to distil core themes. From 99 categories, we developed 36 clusters, which were then developed into six core themes. These core themes are listed below and will be described in the next sections.

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  Core Theme 1 - Time Investment & Mental Effort to Work on the Kit

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  Core Theme 2 - Positive Aspects of the Kit: Guidance & Challenges

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  Core Theme 3 - Disappointing Experiences with the Kit

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  Core Theme 4 - Engaging Beyond the Guide Book

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  Core Theme 5 - Effect of Social Interaction on Engagement with the Kit

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  Core Theme 6 - The Interplay between Workplace & Work Routines

4.1 Core Theme 1: Time Investment & Mental Effort to Work on the Kit

To engage with the kit, and (technological) making in general, time was often a limiting factor. Participants reported that the way they were forced to spend their time did not always align with how they preferred to spend their time, due to the prioritization and urgency of other tasks.

It is noteworthy that this study happened during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in abrupt changes in many people’s lives, and affected their ability to participate in the study and work with the kits, respectively. Many participants reported that the pandemic impacted their physical or mental state. While some participants observed that due to the stay-at-home orders in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, they had more time to work on the kit (P2, P7), others reported that the pandemic and several external factors restricted their available time to engage in the study activities (see Fig. 3). Six participants (P5, P6, P7, P9, P11, P12) reported struggling to find time for activities they wanted to do, including working on the kit. P9, P11 and P7 specifically said they could not engage with the study activities as much as they wished. Several participants (P1, P2, P11) also described their limited spare time as very precious. Three participants (P2, P8, P11) reinforced that other tasks, like their jobs, studies, child care and chores, had higher priority than working on the kit, which influenced not only the amount of time available but also the time period during the day when they could work on the kit. They described managing to engage with the kit only after finishing all other more pressing tasks (i.e. in the evenings).

Just as important as having enough time to engage with the kit, however, was having enough mental capacity to complete the proposed activities. Participants argued that unlike other crafts that they did, working on projects from the kits needed full mental engagement: it was not something they could do ‘on the side’ (P3). Some participants claimed that working on the kit required a lot of mental effort and concentration, turning into an activity that needed its own dedicated time, with full mental engagement—especially when compared to other tasks and activities (P3, P11). Furthermore, several participants reported ‘screen fatigue’: after working from home all day, they could sometimes not bear to look at a screen in their free time (P1, P7, P8, P12). Similarly, others looked at it from a positive perspective, having said that the activities in the guide were a good mental exercise, memory training or ‘when you really dig into the topic you gain new superpowers’ (P3). P2 expressed negative feelings towards the effort put in the kit by saying that it would require a lot of patience and could sometimes even be nerve-racking.

Perhaps related to the high mental effort and time input needed to engage with the kit, many participants stated being proud of their progress with the kit or finding solutions to the challenges throughout the study (P1, P2, P3, P4, P11, P12), which we associate with the previously described efforts needed to complete the activities. The challenging nature of the activities seem to contribute to the rewarding feeling of completion.

Core Theme 1: Time Investment & Mental Effort to Work on the Kit, shows that integrating making into existing complex schedules and social, professional and mental demands poses additional challenges, but also contributes to the feeling of success. The COVID-19 pandemic also had differing effects on the participants’ time to engage in the study: some participants reported having much more time available, while other participants had much less time available. Most participants agreed that engaging with the kit required a larger mental investment than engaging with crafts.

4.2 Core Theme 2: Positive Aspects of the Kit - Guidance & Challenges

Both the Sparkfun kit and the Flora kit came with a guide book that provided an introduction to the elements in the kit, as well as tutorials and examples about the possibilities of these elements. Many participants seemed to appreciate the structure that the guide books offered: P8 noted that the guide offers an ‘immediate orientation’, and you don’t have to hunt down projects to do, and the materials that are needed for them. P7 found it very practical that the guide visually shows which components are needed for a project, in a ‘checklist’ type of way. Furthermore, several participants (Sparkfun: P4, P5, P7; Flora: P6, P9) noted that the guide book was well-structured and easy to follow.

We identified two distinct approaches towards the kit and the guide book. Some participants worked through the guide book in fully chronological order, from start to end (P2, P3, P4, P7, P8), whereas other participants (P6, P10, P11, P12) searched for a tutorial in the guide book that they were interested in, rather than working in chronological order. Participants who used the tutorials in the guide book as a red thread for their explorations were also likely to have a positive opinion of the instructions and tutorials, noting that the projects were easy to realize (P4, P5, P7). Participants mostly also appreciated the physical nature of the guide book, indicating that it was good to be able to fall back on (literally: ‘Zurückgreifen’ or ‘grab back’) on previous instructions or tutorials (P2), or to take notes within the guide book to cement what was learned (P11). Others mentioned that the physical guide made it impossible to copy-paste code, and that manually copying was a good learning experience (P7).

Many participants also reported being motivated by the tutorials (P2, P6, P10, P7), with some participants even stating that failure or frustration with the kit would lead to further motivation (P2, P6, P10)—although other participants (P4, P10) reported that they could become demotivated if things did not work out the way they expected them to. The biggest catalyst for engagement with the kit, however, seems to be instant gratification: many participants (P5, P2, P8, P12, P7, P4) mentioned how the aspect of quickly experiencing success with the kit encouraged them to continue exploring it. P2 specifically recognized the ‘plug-and-play’ nature of the Sparkfun kit as a contributing factor to her quick successes with the kit, and P5 highlighted the tutorials that incorporate light (e.g. by means of LEDs), because in these projects, the effect of actions were immediately visible. In general, the most common type of photograph we received were the photographs that showed a successful project: LED lights embedded in a scarf, an LCD showing personalized text, a finished robot, etc. (see Fig. 4).

While there was no minimum requirement for the amount of time spent engaging with the kits, or the amount of tutorials completed, many of the participants also reported goals that they had imposed upon themselves. The most common goal was to finish all the projects in the guide (P2, P3, P4, P7, P8), while some participants also reported that their personal goal was to go beyond the tutorials in the book, to do a ‘project of their own’ (P3, P7). P2 reported that she saw the tutorials in the Sparkfun guide book, including the coding challenges, as a personal challenge, and that she would not have been satisfied if she had been unable to finish them.

Core Theme 2: Positive Aspects of the Kit - Guidance & Challenges is centred around positive experiences with the kits, as mentioned by participants. Two distinct approaches were identified: some participants worked through the guide book in a chronological order, while others used the book for inspiration, rather than as a project guide. Quick rewards and instant gratification were an important motivational aspect, which resulted in participants mostly sending messages about successful projects. It was also reflected in the type of projects participants selected: projects centred around LEDs and light were described as especially rewarding.

4.3 Core Theme 3: Disappointing Experiences with the Kit - In-Depth Guidance, Projects & Guilt

Although all the participants generally reported positive experiences with the kit, many participants were not completely satisfied with, e.g. the instructions, the types of projects or their own performance while engaging with the kit.

One of the main gripes participants had with the kit was the lack of in-depth explanation of technical aspects. Especially in the area of coding, many participants reported that they simply copied the code as described in the tutorials, without understanding it—although they would have liked to gain a deeper understanding of it (P1, P2, P11, P10, P12). The lack of explanation of the technological aspects of the projects, such as the construction of circuits (P7), left several participants (P5, P7, P10, P11) feeling like even though they had completed many or all of the tutorials, they had not gained enough knowledge to do their ‘own’ projects. P11, whose artistic background sparked her interest in Arduino, described that while she can now see the potential for the use of Arduino in her creative work, she still does not know how to start: she is ‘not there yet’.

With each kit, participants reported on practical problems that impacted their engagement. For the Sparkfun kit, the installation instructions were unclear and led to frustrations (P7). Similarly, participants using the Flora kit had problems with installation and startup (P1, P11, P10). P1 stated that the setup of the microcontroller—installing the development environment and finding the correct drivers—was so frustrating that, if she had not taken part in the study, she would have given up. Some participants had to borrow hardware (P3, P4), as the Arduino platform did not work with their personal devices. This added an extra layer of complexity: aside from learning how to use a microcontroller, how electronics work and how to program, these participants also had to learn how to use the operating system on their borrowed hardware. This led to strong frustrations for both participants. P4 described that she almost dropped out of the study at this point. Furthermore, P5 mentioned that as soon as she discovered that there were mistakes in the physical guidebook, she started using the Adafruit webpage⁸ as a resource instead.

Some of the encountered issues might be related to the fact that participants worked mostly alone and had no one to exchange with. Thus, being stronger enrolled within a making community might help to prevent, and solve disappointing experiences. The importance of social interaction is also supported by the need for get-togethers. As mentioned that get-togethers were not initially planned but suggested by the participants, which highlights the importance of community for some participants.

For an in-depth discussion of social aspects, refer to Core Theme 5 - Effect of Social Interaction on Engagement with the Kit.

Especially for many participants who had received the Flora kit, the tutorials and projects offered in the guide book were disappointing (P6, P9, P10, P11). For one participant (P9), this even resulted in a complete stall after setting up the Arduino Lilypad with her computer: she was so uninspired by the projects, that she never really got into experimentation with the kit. Other participants looked online for projects that interested them, although it was noted that from the components of the Flora kit, it was not immediately clear which projects could be achieved (P6). In any case, for many participants, it was important to work on projects with a purpose (P1, P5, P6, P8, P11). As P1 put it: does anyone really need a scarf that lights up? This was illustrated by the fact that during one of the online get-togethers in which participants shared experiences, one participant told the rest of the group about her plans to make a bicycle brake light based on an online tutorial (P1), promptly inspiring other participants (P4, P5) to also inquire into this project.

Beyond being disappointed by the tutorials in the guide book, some participants were also disappointed by their own achievements. P12 and P10 indicated that the reason they did not share any project pictures, was that they were not satisfied with the results. P12 notes that she was planning to send pictures after she had completed all the tutorials, to show off projects of her own devising—but she never arrived at that stage. Interestingly, Jackson (2010) observed that the process of making is more important than the finished object at the end. Thus, the question remains, why participants were (partially) reluctant to share work in progress and focused on the finished objects. Several participants (P6, P8, P9, P10) mentioned having a bad conscience for engaging less with the kit than they had intended to, thus not fulfilling their self-defined goals. However, participants also expressed feelings of guilt towards the researchers. This guilt, in some cases, was also related to the knowledge that the study data would be used in a project to support gender equality (P9, P10). P2, the most prolific participant, who finished the entire Sparkfun guide book, also expressed that she regarded the study goal as external pressure and that she wanted to provide the researchers with plenty of data.

Core Theme 3: Disappointing Experiences with the Kit - In-Depth Guidance, Projects & Guilt is the antagonist of Core Theme 2. The main gripe many participants had, was the lack of in-depth explanation of technical aspects of projects, which resulted in the participants never achieving a deeper understanding of the foundation of technological making. Furthermore, the difficult initial setup would have caused several participants to drop out, had they not felt obliged to continue due to participation in the study. Guilt for not fulfilling their self-imposed goals, but also for not contributing ‘enough’ towards the study, accompanied many participants as they accomplished fewer projects than they had set out to do.

4.4 Core Theme 4: Engaging Beyond the Guide Book

As described in the previous section, some participants were disappointed with the quality and practicality of the projects described in the guide books. As a result, many of the participants reported an interest in engaging with their kit, beyond what was provided in the guide books. Some participants were still looking for the perfect project (P7, P11), other participants had already found a project that they wanted to engage with (P4, P8) or had already started building it (P1, P2).

It was also important for some participants to create personalized projects (P2, P5, P8). For example, P2 sent us several photos of a project that she had enriched with paper crafts. Some participants also planned to purchase materials in addition to the kit to implement future projects (P10, P12). However, many participants struggled with finding inspiring projects or creating their own projects. In addition, P9 reported that the sheer amount of online tutorials was overwhelming. She had a hard time finding tutorials that used the materials she had available and that were appropriate for her knowledge-level. P2 described the prescriptive nature of the components in the kit as limiting.

Many participants saw professional benefits in their introductions to the Arduino platform and described having plans to continue experimenting with the components in the kit in the future. P2 used her new knowledge in her studies, whereas P5 intended to implement physical computing in her teaching. P12 and P10 saw opportunities to implement the use of Arduino in their artistic work.

Core Theme 4: Engaging Beyond the Guide Book describes aspects related to personalization and creativity. Some participants wanted to develop their own creative projects, yet they struggled due to missing materials or an overwhelming amount of online resources.

4.5 Core Theme 5: Effect of Social Interaction on Engagement with the Kit

A theme that strongly influenced the participants’ experiences with their kits is centred around social interaction. Of course, considering the study took place during a COVID-19-related lockdown in Austria, usual social interaction was disrupted, but participants also linked their engagement with the kit to (desired) social activities in a more general way: participants stated that they found social interaction beneficial for their learning processes (P1, P8, P9, P10, P12).

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of participants’ usual means of social interaction were curbed. Several participants noted the lack of serendipitous contact with colleagues or friends, who could have helped them with issues (P3, P5, P11). P3 noted that while she would not have trouble asking for help if she were already talking to a friend, calling them up ‘out of the blue’ with a question would be uncomfortable for her. P5 said that she would usually pose technological questions to her colleagues during coffee or lunch breaks, but hadn’t had the chance while working from home. Other participants found ways to ask questions even during lockdown: P1 got her brother involved, and P2 asked her classmates after online classes. Some participants also noted being afraid of asking ‘wrong’ questions and losing face with colleagues or friends (P5, P12).

Interestingly, some participants considered asking for help as a type of cheating (P8, P11). P8 even joked about how ‘not emancipated’ it was of her to ask her partner to help out (see Fig. 6), and P11 mentioned that although her partner was more experienced, she wanted to figure her issues out herself.

While all participants seemed to be aware of the plethora of online resources available, including forums and message boards, they did not actively participate. Many participants considered the online communities hostile towards beginners (P2, P5, P8, P11). In relation to online communities, more participants mentioned being afraid of asking ‘dumb’ questions and getting rude replies (P5, P8, P11). Another participant (P2) considered herself ‘too old’ to participate in online forums and found that it was too much of a time investment to get involved.

Core Theme 5: Effect of Social Interaction on Engagement with the Kit was a strong factor. Due to COVID-19, participants reported a lack of serendipitous contacts to discuss problems or ideas. Other participants considered asking others for help cheating, especially when asking male co-workers, partners or family members. Furthermore, many participants struggled with the fear of asking ‘dumb questions’, both online and offline.

4.6 Core Theme 6: The Interplay between Workplace & Work Routines

During the interviews with participants, we observed two key contributors to effective engagements with the kits: participants’ workplace, and participants’ routines for engaging with the kit.

Although all participants agreed that a fixed routine for engaging with the kit would have been helpful, only one participant (P11) indicated planning specific time slots to work on the projects, due to her demanding family life. While some participants (P2, P3, P11) sent diary entries over the entire course of the study duration, it seemed that for other participants (P4, P7), the time spent with the kit was brief but intense. These participants completed several projects within a timeframe of several days, before halting engagement completely. Messages from these participants indicated that they had run into a problem in one of their projects, that they were unable to solve. During the following interview, P7 indeed indicated that she had not wanted to disassemble the project without solving the issue, and that this had prevented her from continuing with other projects. Participants (P8, P11) also noted that it was difficult to get back into the subject after taking a longer break.

Other participants had less difficulty skipping (parts of) projects that were troublesome. P8 recalled the importance of looking at a problem with ‘fresh eyes’, and P2 and P11 often took a step back from a problem, to avoid becoming too frustrated. P10 stated that there is a difference between ‘big projects’ (referred to important projects for school or work) and small leisure projects. She stated that for big projects she is willing to focus more on solving a problem to come up with a good solution, while for leisure projects the focus is less solving a problem, allowing for more improvisation.

Many participants did not have a dedicated workspace to use for their projects, often using multi-use surfaces, such as their home office desk (P7, P8, P11) or dinner table (P3, P6) (see Fig. 7). Working on physical computing projects takes up a lot of space: one needs the microcontroller and components, a laptop, as well as the guide book. Participants therefore often had to clear the space after engaging with the kit, whether the project was finished or not, to be able to use the space for other activities. To address this problem, some participants came up with their own solutions: P2 stored different components in old yoghurt containers, and P10 put the kit on a serving tray, so she could quickly grab and store all materials at once.

Clearing up the projects each time takes valuable time, and also interrupted participants’ workflow. P12 even called the additional effort of cleaning up and setting up a project every time a ‘burden’. Several participants noted that once the kit was out of their sight, it was out of their mind (P5, P10, P11). This contributed to the difficulty in building a working routine. Participants stated that they believed having the kit within reach at all times would have led to more interaction with the kit (P5, P10). As a solution, some participants deliberately kept a piece of the kit on their desk to serve as a visual reminder (P7, P9) or left their project on their workspaces as motivation to finish it, so that they would be able to use their workspace for other things again (P1).

Core Theme 6: The Interplay between Workplace & Work Routines focuses on important factors that contribute to engagement with the kit. Not having a dedicated workspace available—especially during a time when work and study also largely happened at home—was a factor that contributed to a lack of routine. Only one participant specifically planned time slots for interacting with the kit. Some participants engaged with the kit over a brief, intense timespan, whereas others participated regularly throughout the study period. This lack of routine is an impeding factor to engagement, as it is hard to get back ‘into’ a project after you haven’t engaged with it for a longer time.

5 Discussion

In the following section, we will discuss the findings in the format of implications for design of future work that aims to address the barriers and practices of women making in the home. We discuss three distinct categories: time and space, meaningful interactions and community. In each category we discuss the related insights from the findings and present initial ideas for future design interventions. These interventions could lead to practical implementations in the form of prototypes, field studies or inspire debate for future research.

5.1 Time and Space

The first category of implications we will discuss is focused on time and space. A dedicated workspace is an important supportive aspect for technological making in the home (Jackson, 2010), yet most participants did not have access to such a dedicated workspace (see Section 4.6: The Interplay between Workplace & Work Routines). Previous research has shown that when makers enter their project space, they automatically portion off ‘project time’ (Jackson, 2013), which supports creating a routine. When the space people are working in is a multi-use space, this time is not as specifically segregated, and interruptions occur more easily—the doorbell ringing, the dishwasher finishing, a child asking for attention.

Our homes are becoming more and more multifunctional, needing to include spaces for, amongst others, living, working, learning, leisure and teaching (Alhusban et al., 2021). At the same time, living space (in urban environments) is limited. We see the opportunity to explore the design space of tools and furniture that facilitate making at home. However, it is important to not ‘hide away’ the workspace when it is not in use (something that has often happened in the past with women’s crafting (Douglas, 1982)): when the projects or workspace are visible, they serve as a reminder of the activity, and will support users in dedicating time to their projects. Furthermore, the visibility of ongoing projects might prompt visitors to ask about the projects, and inspire them to engage with technological making themselves (Capel et al., 2021).

Differently than working at home, physical makerspaces provide users with a certain predefined sense of identity which comes with joining an already established community. From the findings, we identify an opportunity for future studies to investigate the role and relevance of online and physical communities (e.g. online forums, project sharing websites, local guilds, maker events and faires) in making at home. Would access to such communities, for example, interfere with whether a person who primarily makes at home identifies as a maker—as in being part and contributing to the Maker Movement? Are there differences in learning outcomes when people are exposed to external work and judgment?

Some participants completed the projects over the course of a short period of time. During this short period, participants engaged intensely with the kit, but in the longer term, these participants did not continue experimenting and making. This drop-off in engagement often occurred after a participant had finished a project, or when a participant got stuck in a tutorial, and did not find a solution. It is important to consider that all participants engaged with their kits in their free time. Especially when finding a solution is cumbersome and not fun—due to errors in the guidebook, unwelcoming online communities or a lack of in-depth explanation—people will be less motivated to find a solution to a problem in a project they are working on for their leisure, although (Jackson, 2010, p. 14) noted that making at home is often characterized by the ‘willingness to endure unpleasant situations in order to achieve a higher overall goal’. Thus, also the missing higher goal in the activities—not perceiving the making activities as meaningful and thus not perceiving the time investment as meaningful, cf. Core Theme 3—could have been a hindering factor. It is noteworthy that only one participant stated that she actively planned time for experimenting with the kit.

We observed that when participants (e.g. P4, P7) had run into problems and then did not continue, this was motivated by the need to disassemble the current unfinished project to start the next project. For example, P7 stated not wanting to disassemble her current project if she had not yet solved the problem, which landed her at an impasse.

We posit that a combination of (lack of) time—(see Section 4.1: Core Theme 1 - Time Investment & Mental Effort to Work on the Kit) in combination with a lack of routine (see Section 4.6: Core Theme 6 - The Interplay between Workplace & Work Routines) are the main culprit for the short, but intense engagement. Women spend more time on unpaid work (Criado-Perez, 2019) which then cannot be spent on creative exploration. Research suggests that this imbalance only further increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, as women carried the brunt of the burden of homeschooling children and other child care (Power, 2020). Furthermore, research shows that regular, repeated exposure to new material improves learning, and the longer the intervals between exposure, the bigger the decay of learning (Reddy et al., 2016). Participants who engage infrequently, due to lack of available time, therefore have to relearn concepts that they have engaged with before. In practice, this means that the participants who engaged infrequently due to lack of time, actually had to spend more time to make the same progress as participants who regularly engaged with the kit: the effect therefore compounds. While making at home doesn’t have the identity and cultural challenges of fitting in a makerspace, it adds the physical and mental load of home responsibilities (e.g. family care, chores, etc.) into making. While we see great potential for making to come into our homes in thoughtful ways, it’s still imperative that makerspaces welcome people with different needs. More than creating dedicated makerspaces for women, already established spaces should acknowledge and cherish diversity by allowing making to happen in ways that defy the status quo. This will give women the opportunity to enjoy making with similar benefits of the ‘protection’ of home, without the burdens and distractions that come with that environment.

5.2 Meaningful Interactions

The desire to do meaningful and/or creative, personalized projects, rather than simply follow the tutorials in the guide book that came with the kits, was mentioned by many participants throughout the study, which is in line with Bevan et al. (2015) who emphasized the importance of developing a personally meaningful idea while making.

Generally, two types of approaches towards experimenting with the received kits could be identified. Some participants acted strictly tutorial-based and, for these participants, we often also observed the self-imposed goal to finish as many challenges and projects from the booklet as possible (reflected in Section 4.2: Core Theme 2 - Positive Aspects of the Kit: Guidance & Challenges).

Other participants did not follow the guide book, but were eager to strive for more creative work and tasks (Section 4.4: Core Theme 4 - Engaging Beyond the Guide Book), which is in line with previous research that found that kits aimed towards ‘exploration and material investigation, instead of straightforward replication’ (Perner-Wilson, 2011, p. 2) could lead to more engaging projects. Similarly, Jackson (2010) noted that the freedom for open-ended innovation gives making-activity ‘[...] many of the qualities of play, further reinforcing and enhancing the rewards associated with accomplishment, and achievement against the odds.’ [p. 21]

Combining textile crafting with technological making has been described as a promising venue for attracting women to making in previous research (Buechley et al., 2008, Buechley & Perner-Wilson, 2012, Hill et al., 2021, Posch & Fitzpatrick, 2018, Posch et al., 2019). When looking at the responses of participants in our sample, we observed that participants who got the Sparkfun (Arduino Uno) Inventor kit provided a higher number of photos (in total and also on average for each participant) than those who received the Adafruit (Lilypad) Flora kit. Moreover, both participants (P9, P10) who did not provide any photos received a Flora kit. In the interviews that took place at the end of the study, some participants mentioned reluctance towards the suggested projects in the Flora guide book, especially in reference to the usefulness of the projects. While the combination of textile crafts and technology in general offers great potential for personally meaningful projects, the example projects in the Flora guide book were likely not personally meaningful to the participants, and therefore did not garner high engagement. When using textile craft as a gateway to other types of making, one should therefore be aware that purpose and meaning play a leading role in craft (Rosner & Ryokai, 2009) (perhaps more than in other types of making). Beyond achieving long-term engagement with technological making, practical, meaningful projects are more likely to be used by the maker (and others), providing the benefit that others may see it and associate the project with the woman who made it, thereby disrupting the ‘gendered binary’ around technological projects (Capel et al., 2021). Finally, a higher barrier to engagement might have been the fact that engaging with e-textiles actually requires skills in two different fields: technological/electronic making, and textile crafts. This, combined with the fact that more base materials (i.e. fabrics for prototyping) are needed to execute the projects, could also have led to lower engagement. In the design of starter kits for e-textile making, these barriers should be taken into account.

To move beyond the—lacking in practicality—projects in the guidebooks, participants attempted to find other (more meaningful) projects. This often resulted in a disappointing experience, due to missing resources in terms of both material and know-how to autonomously start a creative project (see Section 4.3: Core Theme 3 - Disappointing Experiences with the Kit). Many technological toolkits, including the ones used in this study, provide code examples in their tutorials, but do not provide in-depth coding instructions. The resulting lack of skills in coding can be a hindering factor when working on a creative project from scratch, where sample code that you can copy from a tutorial is not provided. This is also stated by Rogers et al. (2014), who sees a challenge in putting more coding power, and thus more invention possibilities, into a toolkit, while simultaneously keeping it entry-level and not requiring participants to learn coding for experimentation and invention.

Aside from lacking the practical skills to find the right hardware for their projects, or to write the right code, participants reported a feeling of being overwhelmed when looking for inspiration online, due to the large amount of available resources, and the unclarity about whether these resources suited their skill level or the materials they had available. During the online get-together events, one participant mentioned working on a (to her) meaningful project with the kit (i.e. creating a brake light for her bicycle). Several other participants expressed interest in replicating the project. It seemed that, since one participant had assessed the feasibility of this project already, the other participants felt more confident in trying it out. Unlike when receiving a recommendation for a project from friends or colleagues, many online resources don’t indicate the materials or skill level required for the project. Furthermore, tutorials of all skill levels and for many types of projects are spread over many platforms, making it hard to get a good overview of which feasible projects are available.

A solution to these issues could be to develop a platform that unifies tutorials from different providers, designed so that tutorials and projects can be selected based on parts that the user has at hand and the user’s expertise level. Further, an additional format of tutorial could be introduced, which—rather than guide the user through a project step-by-step—provides an abstract description of the project that allows for experimentation, learning-by-doing and personalization. This could help those wanting to get engaged with technological making find the right resources, suited to their skill level, their available materials and the type of projects that interest them. Furthermore, we see an opportunity for modular toolkits: as described by Perner-Wilson (2011), predefined kits can constrain the type of projects that can be completed with them. Boll et al. (2020) addressed this issue by equipping their students with a basic kit at the start of the semester, and supplying further, more specialized tools and materials customized to the projects that the students were doing. A solution here could be to provide a base platform with several compatible kits in different areas of technological making (e.g. e-textiles, robotics, home automation, network basics, etc.), that allow users to create a foundation of tools and materials that they can use for personally meaningful projects.

5.3 (Self-)Expectations & Guilt

In relation to engaging with the kit, several participants expressed guilt for not doing enough, or not reaching their self-imposed goals during their participation in the study. In some cases, this was in relation to their assumption of the researchers’ expectation for their participation: i.e. not having contributed ‘enough’ to the study. However, many of the participants had also set goals for themselves (e.g. finishing all the projects in the guide book), independent of the study, and expressed guilt because they did not achieve these goals. Even though the researchers emphasized that the aim of the study is to identify barriers, and the number of projects or challenges completed during the study was irrelevant, participants apologized for not contributing more, not finishing more projects, and/or being sparse with communication. The negative feelings some participants experienced towards their engagement with the kit might also relate to the fact that the call for participation and the overall project was framed as feminist research. Thus, there is a reasonable chance that participants cared about the research goals intrinsically, and had an interest to contribute to the topic of ‘women in making’. This personal relevance of the research to the participants may have influenced their self-imposed goals and feelings during participation (Howard & Irani, 2019). These feelings can lead to a negative affect towards the kit, producing stress and anxiety whenever (working on) the kit enters the mind (Pollack & Herres, 2020). This, naturally, does not contribute to building routine and engaging with technological making on a regular basis.

In future work, it would be fruitful to investigate the source of these feelings of guilt, e.g.: how does it influence participants’ experiences while participating in a study, are these feelings rooted in self-imposed goals, perceived external expectations or do they come from somewhere else? Furthermore, the impacts of these negative feelings on engagement with and participation in technological making should be further researched.

5.4 Community

Serendipitous contacts to exchange about projects were mentioned as an important aspect of the participants’ experience. Participants mentioned that asking questions is easier when you meet your colleagues at the coffee machine (P5), rather than emailing or calling them out of the blue (P3). The importance of this factor was amplified by social distancing measures, as serendipitous contacts were reduced to minimum. Planned events like meet-ups, rather than spontaneous meetings, can partially solve the lack of serendipitous contacts. These events can be arranged in such ways that, e.g. social distancing measures can be maintained, and could be used to draw attention of currently underrepresented groups towards making and makerspaces, and diversify the maker community. Inspirations for and example of such dedicated events for women can be found in (Fox, 2015, Noel et al., 2016, Okerlund et al., 2018, Rattaro et al., 2020).

No matter the value of planned events, however, the significance of serendipitous meetings should not be underestimated. Asking a colleague or a friend a quick question, the moment it comes up, can help with immediately solving problems and continuing explorations, rather than having to park the project, impeding progress and landing the maker at an impasse, which leads to frustration and insecurity (Lodge et al., 2018). Moreover, these small, impromptu moments of contact require less planning, less commitment and less social energy than attending an organized event. During times when life is stressful and leisure time is sparse, these serendipitous help-lines can mean the difference between finishing a project, or abandoning it completely.

Participants pro-actively suggested to hold (online) meetups to get to know other participants and exchange about the projects. This was not initially planned, but brought-up by participants during the kick-off telephone calls. We therefore offered two online get-together events during which participants could meet with each other and discuss the kits, their projects, and the progress they had (or had not) been making. Participants suggested that meeting with other participants was beneficial for exchanging ideas. This tracks with previous findings by e.g. Resnick (2007) that in constructionist learning, sharing deepens the engagement in the constructionist activity. In this study, it was noted that participants (e.g. P3, P9) reported feeling more motivated after the meetup.

Designing for serendipity in social contacts during times where people might not be able to share physical space with one-another, is an interesting aspect for future research, going beyond supporting individual technological making activities. For instance, Khanapour et al. (2017) suggests examples of communities like Instructables⁹ that created indicators for separating maker interests (e.g. garden and food) and skill levels by rating the difficulty level of projects. Furthermore, they see examples of collaboration happening in online platforms via a sense of community, e.g. when members started learning a new platform to support a another member’s interest, or via remixing of other’s projects. While previous research endeavours have addressed supporting serendipitous encounters in physical space to support learning activities (see, e.g. Bilandzic & Foth (2014), Eagle & Pentland (2005)), it remains a challenge to facilitate a similar type of serendipitous social contact in the virtual space, especially considering previous online attempts at facilitating serendipitous online connections are widely abused for explicit content and sexual harrassment (Korn, 2017). This issue is also strongly related to the next implication we discuss: the lack of welcoming online communities.

Even though social life, at the time of the study, was strongly shifted to the online sphere, existing social online resources (e.g. forums, bulletin boards) were not actively used by the participants (see Section 4.5 Core Theme 5 - Effect of Social Interaction on Engagement with the Kit). However, most participants did use social online resources for problem-solving passively, by reading threads that were discovered during searching for solutions to problems. In the interviews participants stated that they considered online communities as (too) hostile towards beginners (P2, P5, P8, P11), being afraid of asking ‘dumb’ questions and getting rude replies (P5, P8, P11) or feeling ‘too old’ to participate (P2). These fears are not unfounded. Toxic responses (hate speech, threats, harassment, etc.) are an issue in online communities. 53% of American women have experienced online harassment (Lenhart et al., 2016) resulting in negative emotions (anger, worry or fear), and 27% of women even self-censor to avoid harassment. On Stack Overflow¹⁰ , the largest Q&A website for programmers, women reported using gender-neutral names to avoid harassment, or disengaging completely after negative experience with male users of the platform (Vasilescu et al., 2012). The (emotional) efforts required from women to engage with online platforms are thus much higher than they are for men engaging with online platforms. Kraut & Resnick (2012) further discussed issues of identity in online communities and noted that newcomers are more likely to leave in the event of adversities, as well as have less motivation to help the group or follow the same rule-aware behaviour as so-called ‘old-timers’ [p. 179]. This shows that overall newcomers, independent of gender, are in a more vulnerable position when entering an online community, which becomes even more difficult in communities with strongly gendered identities.

We consider it relevant for future work to investigate how online maker communities can be designed to allow no hostility towards beginners, and women in general, through social or communicative interventions. Here, considerations from related work towards women-only makerspaces and physically safe spaces (Capel et al., 2020, Fox, 2015, Hedditch & Vyas, 2021, Savić & Wuschitz, 2018, Toupin, 2014), as well as recommendations from previous work regarding safe, digital spaces (Linabary, 2017) should be taken into account.

We also observed that the lack of social interaction was a hindering factor in building routines, as reflected in the discussion of Core Theme 5 - Effect of Social Interaction on Engagement with the Kit, mostly due to the lack of (perceived) external social pressure. This effect was naturally amplified by the social distancing regulations and suggestions that were in place during the study. Considering that effective learning of new skills works best in social communities that provide interest-driven activities, relationships and opportunities (Kylie et al., 2020), the social distancing regulations (resulting in, e.g. not being able to participate in workshops, spontaneously asking colleagues or friends for help or exchanging experiences with other participants face-to-face) on the at-home making practices likely influenced participants’ ability to build routine.

For future work, investigations into the relationship between time, social interaction and space, and how digital interactive systems can be used to foster routinizing practises in technological making are required. We see opportunities here for the participatory design of ethical persuasive technologies (Davis, 2012) that can help make a habit out of engaging with technological making, such as tools that support self-directed learning (Moraveji et al., 2011).

5.5 Limitations

This study took place in the winter of 2020/2021, and circumstances at that time (e.g. spending a lot of time at home, reduced social and serendipitous contact, lock-downs, experiencing anxieties, etc.) have had an influence on the study. First, the study design did not allow for any on-site visits or meetings, which means that all observations were mediated through digital technologies, pictures and writings. Even so, while we might have used face-to-face meetings for recruitment and onboarding of participants, the intent was always for the researchers to be as uninvolved in the making activities of the participants as possible, to give participants the opportunity to develop their routines without outside influence. Second, the studied phenomenon of ‘making at home’ underwent collosal changes due to COVID-19, as our findings show, which may mitigate the scope of our findings beyond the pandemic. However, it is becoming evident that the consequences of the pandemic will affect society in the long-term. For example, many people have continued to (partially) work from home, even as social distancing regulations have been lifted (Wethal et al., 2022). The results of this study continue to be relevant in the wider context of ‘making in the home’ beyond stay-at-home orders. Nevertheless, our study has shown how a connection to a community is an important aspect for acquiring new making skills and exchanging about techniques and practises. In future work, we aim to focus on this community aspect and investigate the differences in approaches to making related to makers’ embeddedness within communities.

A further limitation of this study lies in the selection of participants. Choosing participants that also support external validity and generalization of findings is a long-lasting topic in HCI (Gergle & Tan, 2014). The venues in which the call for participation was distributed and the framing of the research as feminist research likely had an influence on the people who were willing to participate. Overall, our participant sample consisted mostly of highly educated, younger women living in Western Europe. The participants all had some experience with making tangible things, and had adequate free time to commit to participate in this study. Further research is needed to see if the findings discussed in this paper are also reflected in other demographic groups, other geographic regions and social-cultural contexts.

Finally, one might question why this research focuses solely on those who identify as women, rather than attempting to make a comparison between women and men. As much of the research in the realm of technological making, hacking and makerspaces, focuses on the average maker, and the average maker is a white, highly educated cis-man, we attempt to counter the balance of research by focusing this work solely on those who identify as women, thus contributing to the growing body of research targeting women’s making. However, we acknowledge that future studies with a comparative perspective (on gender) would enrich the understanding of the gender dimension in making at home. Our discussion related to (the lack of) time and space is one example of how gender-related social constructs can create barriers for women makers and could be further explored in a comparative study.

6 Conclusion

In this paper, we have presented the process, findings and implications following a twenty-week photo diary study into technological making in the home by women. Data was collected in the form of text messages, photos, videos and a closing, semi-structured interview was conducted. This data was analysed by means of an interpretative phenomenological analysis, and six core themes related to participants’ experiences with technological making in the home were identified: (1) Time Investment & Mental Effort to Work on the Kit, (2) Positive Aspects of the Kit: Guidance & Challenges, (3) Disappointing Experiences with the Kit - In-Depth Guidance, Projects & Guilt, (4) Engaging Beyond the Guide Book, (5) Effect of Social Interaction on Engagement with the Kit and (6) The Interplay between Workplace & Work Routines.

With this paper, we contribute to the research focused on women’s engagements in making, by taking a particular focus on the practices of women who engage in technological making in the context of their own home. The findings that were derived from the data collected in this study setup contribute to the discourse around thresholds that women and other underrepresented groups have to overcome in order to engage in technological making and participate in the maker community, specifically when starting to experiment with technological making in the home. We found supportive factors in building routines and providing dedicated workspaces in which projects can be visible, and observed a desire for in-depth knowledge, challenging projects and gratification in the form of completing a project. We also uncovered hurdles in the form of a lack of social interaction when working from home, a lack of time to deeply engage with technological making, and difficulties navigating online tutorials and participating in online forums.

We have offered several design and research directions that will be valuable to pursue in the future, in relation to: the types of kits that are available for people to be introduced to technological making; the way that home work spaces could or should be set up; and the way both online and offline communities could be (re-)structured to be more welcoming to ‘newbies’, especially those who hail from underrepresented groups. In the context of a larger research project,¹¹ we aim to further develop the findings from this and our previous work into a set of interventions to be implemented in two partner makerspaces. We will use inputs from the topics we identified in making at home to explore how existing makerspaces can expand their community and space to create a place for making that can be more inviting to women makers. The interventions will take the form of, for example, a female maker month to showcase different definitions of what the result of making can look like and show that making can have many different identities; or even a hands-on activity that helps people reflect about current spaces for making and what their desirable makerspace would look like—which can help us better understand spacial needs through a participative approach. We hope to be able to implement a number of interventions and evaluate their impact on the number of women that join in these spaces.

Acknowledgments

This work was partially funded by the the Austrian Research Promotion Agency through the project FEM*mad (FFG No. 873000) and the project All*makers (FFG No. FO999892797). The financial support by the Austrian Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology is gratefully acknowledged.

Data Availability Statement

The data underlying this article cannot be shared publicly due to the privacy of individuals that participated in the study. The data will be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding author.

Footnotes

References

Author notes