Barriers to End-User Designers of Augmented Fabrication

Augmented fabrication is the practice of designing and fabricating an artifact to work with existing objects. Although common both in the wild and as an area for research tools, little is known about how novices approach the task of designing under the constraints of interfacing with real-world objects. In this paper, we report the results of a study of fifteen novice end users in an augmented fabrication design task. We discuss obstacles encountered in four contexts: capturing information about physical objects, transferring information to 3D~modeling software, digitally modeling a new object, and evaluating whether the new object will work when fabricated. Based on our findings, we suggest how future tools can better support augmented fabrication in each of these contexts.