Recently, Makers have been observed in a special way. Students and academics, politicians and managers, enterprises and professionals look for Fab Labs, contact them on social media, meet them at Maker Faires in order to ask them how to develop new products, add innovative technological solutions to existing products, establish more open and less conventional design initiatives, revolutionize the production system, ...
There have been many requests to fill surveys, release interviews, support research and thesis...but the results are not always published or shared. Makers, who are generally open minded people, gladly participate, explain and share information. Essentially they are asked about everything but what do they get back?
The idea of the Makers' Inquiry is simple: it is an open and replicable research format, aiming at exploring the condition of makers who operate in a certain geographical reality. The first edition was tested in Italy during 2014. Then other researchers could carry out the survey in their own countries. Therefore, in this way, it would be possible to extend over time the database and compare the results at international level.
The main concepts of the Makers' Inquiry are:
The Makers' Inquiry explores makers world from several points of view - ethnographic, economic, technological, manufacturing and design – in order to understand how this phenomenon of Makers and Maker laboratories is evolving. The Makers' Inquiry wants to answer these questions:
The data obtained through the Makers' Inquiry is analyzed with the following goals:
The Makers' Inquiry started in 2013; here below you can check its updated history.
The project is open to the participation of other researchers and makers: read more about joining it or just its discussion on the Contact page.