Making It Work Is the Work: Engineering Maturity as Epistemic Work

TL;DR

This paper argues that engineering maturity in fabrication systems depends on epistemic work, which produces transferable knowledge across materials and users, and introduces six dimensions called Fab-ilities to evaluate this maturity.

Contribution

It reframes engineering maturity as epistemic work and proposes six dimensions, Fab-ilities, to assess the transferability and established aspects of fabrication artifacts.

Findings

Five projects revealed gaps between publication and transfer requirements.

Different dissemination strategies exposed varying knowledge gaps.

The six Fab-ilities dimensions help evaluate engineering maturity.

Abstract

Many HCIxfabrication systems are compelling as prototypes but remain difficult to reuse, extend, or transfer beyond their original publication. A common explanation is that adoption simply takes time. We argue that the issue is more fundamental. The knowledge needed to make fabrication systems transferable, namely how they behave across different materials, machines, and users, usually does not exist at the time of publication because the work required to generate this knowledge is rarely incentivized or rewarded. Drawing on engineering epistemology and prior debates in systems-oriented HCI, we reframe engineering maturity as epistemic work: sustained engineering effort that produces knowledge which prototyping alone cannot reveal. We propose six dimensions, Fab-ilities, as a vocabulary to describe what aspects of fabrication artifacts have become established and what knowledge remains tacit: (1) buildability, (2) executability, (3) reliability, (4) maintainability, (5) transferability, and (6) scalability. We describe five of our own projects (JigFab, StoryStick++, Silicone Devices, LamiFold, and PaperPulse), where varied attempts at dissemination, such as commercialization, spin-offs, and market exploration, each exposed different gaps between what we published and what transfer actually required.