Understanding the Homepreneurship Opportunities Afforded by Social Networking and Personal Fabrication Technologies

Abstract

The decreased cost and increased usability of personal fabrication technologies has enabled a new generation of crafters to integrate digital designs and computationally created artifacts into physically-based practices. With the simultaneous ubiquity of e-commerce and social networking channels, these technologies have enabled many crafters to transform their hobbies into home-based businesses. To understand the opportunities and challenges that fusing social networking platforms, personal fabrication equipment, and e-commerce have afforded these homepreneurs, an online survey and follow-up interviews were conducted with crafters who use hobbyist cutting plotters to personalize and sell goods online. The findings uncovered an emerging group of homepreneurs, i.e., mompreneurs, who use these technologies for supplemental income for their families and highlighted the emotional and opportunistic benefits that such personalized, at-home manufacturing affords. They also highlighted the workflows and lifestyle implications of using these technologies to run home-based businesses, the multi-faceted usage and dependence these homepreneurs have on online social platforms such as Facebook, the complex software toolchains that are used, and the commonplace practice of appropriating designs from others that occurs in this community.