Hackability, Digital Fabrication, Technology, and Design for Social Impact

Abstract

Hackability is an application of mass customization ideas, that produce solutions in a co-design approach. The motivation behind our efforts is to provide social inclusion through a new manufacturing process for people with disabilities. Very often people with disabilities need too specific solutions that are not addressable by a mass production approach and this requires high degrees of customization in order to fully satisfy their needs. Evidence of this problem is that they often try to build (hack) autonomously customized solutions for themselves, because existing industrial devices are too expensive, are required in fewer quantities, and often paid for by directly by the few who use them. Moreover, the digital fabrication process could be a learning and professional opportunity for makers and designers, creating an active ecosystem through international FabLabs and maker spaces network. For this reason we staredt in 2015 in Turin (Italy), Hackability. Hackability is anaims to identify, invite, inform, interest, and involve makers, designers, technicians, FabLabs, and people with disabilities, in an on-line and off-line community, to realize products for everyday life using new (or improved) digital fabrication processes.