Fablab movement: Research design by mixed methods

Abstract

Digital manufacturing laboratories (FabLab) are a reality that presents new opportunities for users and consumers to become designers and creators of everyday objects. Conceived in the MIT at the beginning of this century, as project development environments with digital components have undergone spectacular growth in recent years. The FabLab movement, partly due to its youth and a certain distance from academic circuits as it is more related to the Maker culture and the Open-Source movement, has been little formally studied. The present work proposes an approach to this movement through the use of a mixed methodology that allows identifying the relevant dimensions in this movement and defining the research questions to be answered in subsequent investigations.