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LilyPad Arduino: How an Open Source Hardware Kit is Sparking new Engineering and Design Communities Leah Buechley High-Low Tech Group MIT Media Lab [email protected] ABSTRACT This paper examines the distribution, adoption, and evolution of an open-source hardware toolkit we developed called the LilyPad Arduino. We track the two-year history of the toolkit and its user community from the time the kit was commercially introduced, in October of 2007, to September of 2009. Using sales data, publicly available project documentation, and text from user forums and surveys, we explore the relationship between the LilyPad and its adopters. We investigate the community of developers who has adopted the kit (paying special attention to gender), explore what people are building with it, describe how user feedback impacted the development of the kit and examine how and why people are contributing their own LilyPad-inspired tools back to the community. What emerges is a portrait of a new technology and a new engineering/design community in co-evolution. Keywords LilyPad Arduino, open-source hardware, communities, evolution, electronic textiles, e-textiles, computational textiles, wearable computing. INTRODUCTION Democratized Hardware Digital technologies that enable people to find, create, and distribute information have, in the past couple of decades, profoundly reshaped the way we work and live. Most recently, web 2.0 technologies have enabled people to produce and share texts, movies, and pictures in ways they never did before. We are a the beginning of a new chapter in this evolution as similar technologies move off of the computer screen and into the physical world. For example, online marketplaces like Etsy [10] and Threadless [27] are making it easy for individuals to design, sell, and buy their own custom made physical goods. Digital fabrication devices like laser cutters, 3D printers, and computer-controlled knitting machines are allowing for “mass customization”, enabling people and companies to quickly design and build personalized devices [14]. Businesses are employing tools like Innocentive to crowd-source complex scientific and engineering tasks that involve physical labor [17]. Ever growing communities of people are sharing advice on how to build real world stuff from dresses and rockets to robots and windmills on sites like Instructables [18]. Open-source hardware communities that promote the creation of technologies whose physical description is as open as their digital one are growing around tools like Openmoko [23], the Chumby [8], and the Arduino [1]. These democratized technologies, that impact both the digital and physical realms, are set to play an increasing role in the production of goods yet surprisingly little scholarship has examined them or their communities. Several books touch on or mention these themes. Gershenfeld's Fab [14] discusses new design and manufacturing models; Anderson’s The Long Tail, and Tapschott’s and William’s Wikinomics [26] describe the economic implications of web 2.0 technologies; von Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation [29] makes a case for the economic and societal advantages of supporting end- user innovation. However, no one has investigated the democratized physical/digital movement comprehensively. In particular, while considerable research has investigated open-source software communities (cf [11]), almost no one has examined open-source hardware (OSH) communities. The best overview to date is provided by Weiss who, in a short paper, gives introductions to several OSH projects [31]. This paper seeks to expand the exploration of this new and, we believe, critical territory by describing the early history of the LilyPad Arduino, an OSH toolkit. We introduce the kit, explore how it is being adopted and employed by an unusual group of developers—a large percentage of whom are women—describe how the design of the kit has evolved in response to user feedback, and examine several LilyPad variations and extensions that have been developed by community members. Background: Arduino and LilyPad In the past several years, a microcontroller platform called Arduino has come to dominate the landscape of interaction design. The Arduino is an inexpensive, open source, and relatively easy-to-use embedded computing platform that was developed by educators and students at the Ivrea Interaction Design Institute in 2005 [1,2,28]. Since the platform was introduced, over 80,000 Arduinos have been sold [16,28] and the platform is being used to teach interaction design, engineering, and computer science in LEAVE BLANK THE LAST 2.5 cm (1”) OF THE LEFT COLUMN ON THE FIRST PAGE FOR THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE.

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Page 1: LilyPad Arduino: How an Open Source Hardware Kit is ... · LilyPad Arduino: How an Open Source Hardware Kit is Sparking new Engineering and Design Communities Leah Buechley High-Low

LilyPad Arduino: How an Open Source Hardware Kit isSparking new Engineering and Design Communities

Leah BuechleyHigh-Low Tech Group

MIT Media [email protected]

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the distribution, adoption, andevolution of an open-source hardware toolkit we developedcalled the LilyPad Arduino. We track the two-year historyof the toolkit and its user community from the time the kitwas commercially introduced, in October of 2007, toSeptember of 2009. Using sales data, publicly availableproject documentation, and text from user forums andsurveys, we explore the relationship between the LilyPadand its adopters. We investigate the community ofdevelopers who has adopted the kit (paying specialattention to gender), explore what people are building withit, describe how user feedback impacted the development ofthe kit and examine how and why people are contributingtheir own LilyPad-inspired tools back to the community.What emerges is a portrait of a new technology and a newengineering/design community in co-evolution.

KeywordsLilyPad Arduino, open-source hardware, communities,evolution, electronic textiles, e-textiles, computationaltextiles, wearable computing.

INTRODUCTIONDemocratized HardwareDigital technologies that enable people to find, create, anddistribute information have, in the past couple of decades,profoundly reshaped the way we work and live. Mostrecently, web 2.0 technologies have enabled people toproduce and share texts, movies, and pictures in ways theynever did before.

We are a the beginning of a new chapter in this evolutionas similar technologies move off of the computer screenand into the physical world. For example, onlinemarketplaces like Etsy [10] and Threadless [27] are makingit easy for individuals to design, sell, and buy their owncustom made physical goods. Digital fabrication deviceslike laser cutters, 3D printers, and computer-controlledknitting machines are allowing for “mass customization”,enabling people and companies to quickly design and buildpersonalized devices [14]. Businesses are employing tools

like Innocentive to crowd-source complex scientific andengineering tasks that involve physical labor [17]. Evergrowing communities of people are sharing advice on howto build real world stuff from dresses and rockets to robotsand windmills on sites like Instructables [18]. Open-sourcehardware communities that promote the creation oftechnologies whose physical description is as open as theirdigital one are growing around tools like Openmoko [23],the Chumby [8], and the Arduino [1].

These democratized technologies, that impact both thedigital and physical realms, are set to play an increasingrole in the production of goods yet surprisingly littlescholarship has examined them or their communities.Several books touch on or mention these themes.Gershenfeld's Fab [14] discusses new design andmanufacturing models; Anderson’s The Long Tail, andTapschott’s and William’s Wikinomics [26] describe theeconomic implications of web 2.0 technologies; vonHippel’s Democratizing Innovation [29] makes a case forthe economic and societal advantages of supporting end-user innovation. However, no one has investigated thedemocratized physical/digital movement comprehensively.In particular, while considerable research has investigatedopen-source software communities (cf [11]), almost no onehas examined open-source hardware (OSH) communities.The best overview to date is provided by Weiss who, in ashort paper, gives introductions to several OSH projects[31].

This paper seeks to expand the exploration of this new and,we believe, critical territory by describing the early historyof the LilyPad Arduino, an OSH toolkit. We introduce thekit, explore how it is being adopted and employed by anunusual group of developers—a large percentage of whomare women—describe how the design of the kit has evolvedin response to user feedback, and examine several LilyPadvariations and extensions that have been developed bycommunity members.

Background: Arduino and LilyPadIn the past several years, a microcontroller platform calledArduino has come to dominate the landscape of interactiondesign. The Arduino is an inexpensive, open source, andrelatively easy-to-use embedded computing platform thatwas developed by educators and students at the IvreaInteraction Design Institute in 2005 [1,2,28]. Since theplatform was introduced, over 80,000 Arduinos have beensold [16,28] and the platform is being used to teachinteraction design, engineering, and computer science in

LEAVE BLANK THE LAST 2.5 cm (1”) OF THE LEFTCOLUMN ON THE FIRST PAGE FOR THE

COPYRIGHT NOTICE.

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university departments around the world. As one measureof the platform’s impact on the computing community, asearch for “Arduino” in the ACM Digital Library yields119 results, including papers on environmental sensornetworks, tangible interfaces, and new musical instruments.

Perhaps more compelling than the platform’s individualsuccess however is the fact that it has inspired—and bybeing open source actively facilitated—countlessextensions, and variations. For example, the “Boarduino”is identical to the Arduino, but, unlike the original, fitsonto a standard breadboard [3], the “Sanguino” is similar tothe Arduino, but is based on an AVR microcontroller withmore I/O pins and processing power [25], and the “Gainer”is an Arduino that includes a built in XBee radio tofacilitate wireless networking [13]. Each of these variationscan be programmed with the open source Arduino software(or some slight variation of it), and draws upon andcontributes to a shared body of knowledge anddocumentation that has grown up around Arduino. Inshort, Arduino has emerged as a community supported andconstructed hardware/software standard for interactiondesign.

Figure 1. Components of the commercially availableLilyPad Arduino kit and a sample construction.

The remainder of this paper will focus on an Arduinovariation that we developed called the LilyPad which wedesigned in part by following the Arduino’s open sourcehardware design. The LilyPad is a toolkit that enablespeople to create their own electronic textiles or “e-textiles”[5,6]. The LilyPad is the first kit that was designed forelectronic textiles and consists of a spool of conductivethread and a set of sew-able electronic modules—includinga sewable Arduino microcontroller, a temperature sensor, anaccelerometer, and an RGB LED. E-textiles areconstructed by sewing these modules onto a cloth backingwith conductive thread, which provides both the physicaland electrical connections between the pieces. The behaviorof constructions is specified by programming the LilyPadmicrocontroller using the Arduino developmentenvironment. Figure 1 shows a picture of the kit and asample e-textile that was constructed with it, a turn-signalequipped biking jacket. As the figure hints, e-textilesoccupy a design landscape that is strikingly different from

that of traditional electronics. They can be soft, wearable,washable, and colorful.

The LilyPad Arduino project began as an academic researchproject in 2006 [5], but grew into a commercial endeavorwhen a for-sale kit was released on October 1, 2007. Sincethis release, over 20,000 discrete LilyPad components havesold, including over 3300 LilyPad Arduinomicrocontrollers. We mention these numbers simply toillustrate that there is a community of LilyPad users, and,as we will describe in proceeding sections, it is a vibrant,and growing one. It is important to stress however that theLilyPad community is a subset—a distinct and unique onebut a subset nonetheless—of the larger Arduinocommunity.

By studying LilyPad adopters, we hope to betterunderstand how the group is growing and changing, howwe can better support its evolution, and how we mightinspire and support similarly diverse and non-traditionaltechnology communities in the future.

In the following sections we investigate how the LilyPadsparked a new and unusual engineering/design communityby looking at who is working with the kit, what they arebuilding, and how they are collaborating to constructtutorials and documentation. We then investigate theinverse relationship—how a community influences thedesign of a tool it has adopted. It should be stressed thatthese investigations are exploratory, representing our firststeps at studying and understanding this community.

WHO IS USING LILYPAD? The first thing we were interested in discovering was whois using our tools? We were especially interested to knowif the community of LilyPad users differed in any wayfrom traditional electronics and programming hobbyistcommunities. To begin our investigation of this question,we sifted through 20 months of LilyPad sales data,aggregating it by geography and gender.

This data only contained the names, addresses and salesrecords for customers. We did not have access to otherdemographic information like age, ethnicity, andeducational background. To extract gender informationfrom the data, we hand tagged each customer’s name (withthe assistance of colleagues from around the globe). Thus,“Michaels” were identified as male and “Jennifers” asfemale. Since some names are gender ambiguous (i.e.:Chinese names written in the English alphabet, and thename “Alex”) and some customers were identified only asinstitutions we were not able to classify all customers bygender.

We analyzed the records of over 2000 people whopurchased over 20,000 LilyPad products from fall 2007 tospring 2009. We discarded the records of purchasers whobought more than $5000 worth of goods (five records intotal), assuming these customers to be distributors ratherthan individual customers. We also discarded records ofour own purchases. In the remaining data, we were able toconfidently classify the gender of 89% of the records.

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To contextualize the LilyPad data, we also analyzed therecords of 10,000 people who purchased Arduino boardsfrom the same retail supplier from spring 2006 to spring2009. We believe this data provides a representativepopulation of traditional Arduino adopters, and thus a goodcomparison population on most fronts, exceptinggeography1. We adopted the same process for preparing thisdata as we did for the LilyPad—eliminating purchases of$5000 or more (six records), eliminating records of ourown purchases, and hand-tagging each record with genderinformation. For this data, we were able to classify thegender of 87% of the records.

Figure 2. Customers by location

61%

77%53%

70%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

LilyPadcustomers

Arduinocustomers

LilyPadsales

Arduinosales

unknownmalefemale

Figure 3. Customers by gender

Figures 2 and 3 summarize our results. As the graphsshow, LilyPad customers come mostly from the UnitedStates (68%) and Europe (13%). Within the records wewere able to classify by gender, 11% of Arduino purchaserswere female and 31% of LilyPad purchasers were female.Looking at total sales volume (instead of number of

1 We included only purchases of the standard USB Arduino in

our analysis. It is important to note that whileSparkFun—the company who provided our data—is the solemanufacturer and distributor of the LilyPad, it is only areseller of the Arduino. Thus, while the LilyPad sales data i scomprehensive, the Arduino data does not cover all Arduinosales. However, it does account for a significant amount oftotal Arduino sales (approximately 30%) and a largepercentage of United States sales [16, 28].

customers), female purchasers accounted for 17% of totalArduino sales and 34% of LilyPad sales. (It is interestingto speculate about why female customers spend more onaverage than their male counterparts—are women who haveovercome cultural stereotypes to participate in engineeringespecially prolific builders?, are men savvier buyers?—butwe do not have sufficient data to draw any conclusions.)

Another interesting trend we found is summarized in Table1. Male LilyPad customers (32%) were more likely thanfemale LilyPad customers (19%) to have also purchased anArduino. This pattern holds if we analyze only US data, forwhich we can more reasonably compare the LilyPad andArduino groups along this dimension. Among US LilyPadcustomers, 35% of men also purchased an Arduino whereas22% of women did so. We hypothesize that this indicatesthat the LilyPad is being purchased by women as an entrylevel tool more often than it is being purchased as such bymen. That is, we believe that more women than men maybe having their first—and perhaps only—embeddedcomputing experiences via the LilyPad kit. Whereas formen, the LilyPad is perhaps more likely to be somethingthey purchase after they have become traditional Arduinodevelopers. We will present qualitative data that supportsthis hypothesis shortly.

F M USA F USA M

LilyPad+ purchasedArduino

19% 32% 22% 35%

Arduino+ purchasedLilyPad

-- -- 9% 4%

Table 1. Overlapping LilyPad and Arduino purchases.USA F and USA M refer to gender information for USA sales.

Looking at this issue from another angle, 9% of femaleArduino customers also purchased LilyPads compared to4% of male Arduino customers. (These percentages arecalculated for US data only.) Thus, it would seem that theLilyPad is more appealing to female Arduino customersthan to their male counterparts. Regrettably, for both ofthese calculations we did not look at which purchases camefirst. That is, we did not ask: did people begin bypurchasing Arduinos and then purchase LilyPads or viceversa? This is analysis we plan to do in subsequentstudies.

To expand our analysis of who LilyPad adopters are, wealso looked at LilyPad project postings on the mediasharing sites Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, and Instructables.For each of these sites, we searched for content tagged“LilyPad Arduino” or “LilyPad wearables” and thenselected postings that documented finished projects. Forexample, a photograph of a pile of LilyPad boards wouldnot be counted as a finished project while a photograph orvideo of an interactive garment would be counted. Foreach of these completed projects, we used publiclyavailable profile data of the poster to determine the countryand gender of the creator whenever possible. (We

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eliminated all of our own project postings fromconsideration.)

In our search, we found 62 unique projects, six of whichwere collaborative—accomplished by two or more people.Four of the contributors in the group were repeat posters,contributing two or more different projects. We were ableto determine location information for 85% of projectposters and gender information for 89%.

For context, we also analyzed 62 postings of completedArduino projects. We gathered this group by selecting thefirst 35 projects that appeared in Flickr, the first 14 uniqueprojects (projects that were not documented on Flickr) thatappeared in YouTube, the first 8 unique projects thatappeared in Vimeo, and the first 5 unique projects thatappeared in Instructables in response to a search for“Arduino”. This gave us equal numbers of each type ofproject to analyze for each media site. We used the samecriteria for selecting completed Arduino projects as we didfor selecting completed LilyPad projects, and we gatheredinformation about the location and gender of posters in thesame way. We were able to determine geographicalinformation for 91% of these posters and genderinformation for 93%. All of our data is summarized inFigure 4 and Figure 5.

Figure 4. Builder/documenters by location.

32%

82%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

LilyPad Arduino

unknownmalefemale

Figure 5. Builder/documenters by gender.

As the figures show, LilyPad and Arduinobuilder/documenters came from very similar locations,primarily the United States (LilyPad: 37%, Arduino: 39%)

and Europe (LilyPad: 31%, Arduino: 36%), withsignificant contributions also coming from Asia (LilyPad:13%, Arduino: 10%).

The discrepancy between the geographical distribution ofLilyPad customers seen in Figure 2 and the distribution ofbuilder/documenters shown in Figure 4 is almost certainlydue to the fact that we deleted distributor sales from ourearlier (Figure 2) data to get more accurate information onindividual customers. Distributor purchases came fromEurope, Canada, and Asia, and customers in these locationsare likely getting boards from resellers.

Probably the most remarkable information in the figures isthe fact that approximately 64% of the completed LilyPadprojects we obtained gender information on wereconstructed by women. That is, of the 89% of projects forwhich we were able to determine the gender of the creator,64% were constructed by women. This contrasts starklywith the gender distribution of Arduino builder/creatorswho are approximately 88% male (again within the groupwe were able to classify by gender). Equally compelling,this percentage is surprisingly different from the percentageof women who purchased LilyPad kits: 64% of the projectswe found were built by women, but women made up only31% of LilyPad customers. Female customers seem to bemore likely to construct, document, and share projects thanmale customers. It is possible that women and men areconstructing projects in proportion to their purchases andmen are just less likely to document them, but this seemsunlikely given the number of men who documentedArduino projects. A more probable explanation is thatwomen are more likely to actually employ their LilyPadonce they’ve purchased it. It is also noteworthy that allfour of the LilyPad contributors who documented morethan one finished project were women.

The data we have collected so far paints a portrait of theLilyPad community as one that confounds genderstereotypes and patterns of who engages in electricalengineering and computer science—both overwhelminglymale dominated fields [7,15,21]. (In a particularly strikingexample of how imbalanced computing communities oftenare, over 90% of contributors to open source softwareprojects are usually male [11].) Women make up asignificant percentage of the people who purchase LilyPadkits, and seem to make up a majority of the people whoconstruct successful LilyPad projects. Though we don’tyet have enough information to draw clear conclusions, thefact that all of the most active LilyPad project contributorswere women may indicate that women are generally playingthe roles of leaders and innovators in this burgeoningengineering community.

There is a long history of systems and curricula designed toattract women to computing (cf [7,19,21] for wonderfulprojects in this arena), but to our knowledge in no instancehave researchers documented an autonomous computingcommunity that is—naturally and without externalinfluences—dominated by women. It would be remarkableif LilyPad adopters were to grow into such a community.

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Figure 6: LilyPad in the wild. Projects include interactive clothing, accessories, plush toys,dance costumes, sculptures, and biking accessories.

WHAT ARE PEOPLE BUILDING WITH LILYPAD?LilyPad enables people to build artifacts that were difficultto build before the tool’s introduction. Though peoplecertainly designed and constructed e-textiles before theLilyPad (cf. [4, 20, and 24]), this was an activity largelyrelegated to professional researchers and engineers. TheLilyPad makes the domain accessible to a much broaderaudience, and, as we touched on in the previous section, itis giving rise to a new and unusual community ofdevelopers. Tellingly, this new community is buildingdevices that are very different from those normally built byelectronics hobbyists and engineers.

To study what people are constructing with LilyPad andhow this relates back to who the builders are, we examinedthe group of documented LilyPad projects we described inthe last section. To supplement this data, we alsoconducted a small survey of a group of 15 designers whohad either (a) contributed one or more significant LilyPadprojects to the 62 we compiled, or (b) contributedsignificantly to the project in some other way. Eleven ofthe 15 designers were identified through the 62 projects wecompiled and the remaining four though academicpublications or personal correspondence (when a designercontacted the authors).

Our survey included questions like: how did you becomeinterested in electronic textiles?, why did you chose the

LilyPad for your project?, what if any problems did youexperience with the LilyPad?, and what if any extensionswould you like to see added to the kit?

Figure 6 shows a few of the 62 projects we found in oursearch. These images were compiled from projects that wereposted on Flickr. What’s immediately apparent from thephotos is just how unlike traditional technological devicesthe artifacts are. To underline the comparison, we haveincluded a small selection of the Arduino projects wecompiled for our analysis in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Arduino projects.

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Most of the LilyPad projects in Figure 6 are textiles, manyof them are wearable, and several have a design or artisticfocus. They include dance costumes that record dancers’movements, interactive textile wall-hangings, and light-upcycling gear. It is worth taking a moment to look at a fewof these projects in more detail.

The image in the center of the figure is of an interactiveembroidered wall hanging. The piece includes lightsensors, LEDs, and speakers and creates sounds that changeas an observer approaches or moves away from the fabric.The embroidery is a good example of how e-textiles canintegrate traditional crafts—in this case needlepoint—withelectronics and computation. This piece was constructedby Rebecca Stern, a graduate student in Fine Arts atArizona State University.

The stuffed teddy bear, shown mid-construction in thebottom row of the figure was constructed by Diana Hughes,a graduate student in Interactive Media at the University ofSouthern California. In this piece, sensors in the bear’sbody capture a person’s interaction, and the LilyPadArduino communicates this information to a computer viaBluetooth to control a Flash-based video game; the bearfunctions as a soft video game controller.

Finally, its worth highlighting one of the non-textileprojects. The book on the top row of the figure is part ofan installation built by the artist Edith Kollath. In thispiece, a group of books rest on tables and “breathe”, gentlyopening and closing like small bellows. Each book in theinstallation is controlled by a LilyPad. Asked in thesurvey why she chose the LilyPad for her project, Edithcited the board’s thinness, but also remarked that “Eventhough for this project I could have used a Sanguino orso, I just like the LilyPad.”2

A primary question we were interested in exploring waswhether or not these artifacts, especially the textile-basedartifacts, were things that would have been built before theLilyPad kit was released. As we mentioned earlier, webelieve that many of them simply wouldn’t have beenconstructed before the LilyPad, but we wanted to know ifcommunity members agreed with this assessment. Toexplore this question we asked people in our small surveypopulation how they got interested in e-textiles and whatthe LilyPad had contributed to their work. Here arecomments from three of our respondents:

“The LilyPad is a nice electronic system because it gavepeople ability to realize e-textile projects…In all (of our)projects the LilyPad and the Arduino software give us afast way to do e-textile physical prototyping.” (maledesigner in his 30s) 2 In our web searches we found a few similar projects wheredevelopers used the LilyPad in non-textile projects because ofits small size and/or its aesthetic design. Though we won’tlook at these examples in detail, another surprising instance ofthis type of usage was the adoption of the LilyPad by acommunity of unmanned aerial vehicle hobbyists [6].

“I had always been interested in textiles and garments,and also in creative art…, but somehow I had never reallythought of working in e-textiles because it seemed that itinvolved a huge skillset and also very specializedequipment...The Lilypad Arduino attracted my interestbecause it gave the promise that…something like this wasdoable by normal people.” (female computer scienceprofessor, 40s)

“Lilypad and the related e-textile field made me braveenough to jump into hardware development…Before Istarted this project, I had absolutely no experience withelectronics of any kind. I STILL can't solder to save mylife, but it doesn't matter, because I can sew.” (femaleart/technology student, 20s)

Three or four of the people we surveyed would likely bebuilding e-textiles with or without the LilyPad, but theirresponses are also interesting. Here are two quotes fromthis group:

“(the LilyPad) made me much more aware of what wasgoing on and that the field of DIY wearable electronicshad started to become developed…it was the first toolspecifically for wearable technology (fabric electronics,soft circuits) that I encountered.” (femaledesigner/engineer, 20s)

“The Lilypad platform has served to open up a grander,more accessible dialog surrounding wearable electronicsand has made resources for this kind of work much morereadily available.” (female designer/professor, 30s)

These answers reinforced our hypothesis that the LilyPadhas sparked a new creative community rather thanproviding tools to an already existing community. Wewould like to examine this issue more deeply in the futureby undertaking larger surveys that ask more directquestions about people’s previous experience in electronics,computing, and textiles.

In addition to posting images, videos, and tutorials, thecommunity is supporting and assisting itself by asking andanswering LilyPad questions on the Arduino forum. Ournext section will examine these posters in more detail.

A COMMUNITY INFLUENCES DESIGN, PART ONEThe last two sections were devoted to examining how theLilyPad Arduino sparked a new community of unorthodoxdevelopers. In this section, we will look at how thatcommunity influenced the design and evolution of theLilyPad. In particular, we will examine how early LilyPadadopters, who posted questions and comments in onlineforums impacted an important LilyPad design decision.

To examine the relationship between postings and theLilyPad design, we analyzed 283 postings from theArduino forum posted between October 2007 and April2009 which contained the word “LilyPad” in their subject.These entries were contributed by 84 unique posters, 15%

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(13 people) of whom volunteered location or genderinformation about themselves in their forum profiles.Since this group was so small we will not analyze theirgeographical data, but it is worth noting that 100% of thepeople who volunteered gender information were male.That is, among LilyPad forum posters there were no self-identified women. We believe that this statistic likelypoints to important cultural attributes of the forum thatmay discourage female participation—do women feelintimidated to join the community or embarrassed to admittheir gender, and, if so, why?—however, we do notcurrently have enough data to shed light on the issue.

Our analysis of the text of postings revealed an evolvingcommunity whose comments and concerns are tightlycoupled to the design on the LilyPad. The remainder ofthis section will be devoted to a short analysis of oneparticular set of forum postings which identified a user-interface problem and then validated its solution.

When we released the LilyPad, it was difficult to attach toa computer to program, requiring the construction of aspecial purpose programming board. Early LilyPadadopters found this confusing and flooded the user forumwith help requests and expressions of frustration. This earlystate of affairs and was summed up by a forum poster whoobserved that “it seems like this is a product changerequest and/or product opportunity. MAKE IT EASIER TOCONNECT THE LILYPAD TO YOUR PC”.

We were quickly persuaded that our original design neededupdating, and in March of 2008 we released a new versionof the LilyPad along with a companion programming boardthat required no extra “hacking” to use. Almostimmediately after we released the new version, the tone andcontent of the user forums changed. First of all, theyquieted down noticeably—over half of all forum postingswere put up in those turbulent first six months and thesepostings accounted for 73% of all of the LilyPad forumtext. The tone of the discussion also changed significantly.Some of the most common words in the first six monthswere “tx”, “rx”, and “power”—all related to theprogramming problem. In contrast, the most commonwords once the improved board was released included“thanks”, “code”, and “XBee”. In this simple languageshift, we can detect people moving away from expressionsof frustration, beginning to ask for help with specificprojects, and expressing their gratitude when others assistthem.

This is, in many ways, a simple story about one designdecision, but we believe one that has importantimplications for design and technology research, especiallyresearch at the intersection of ubiquitous computing,human-computer interaction, and design. In the scenariowe’ve described, we as designers of a tool had direct andimmediate connection to a group of users via onlineforums. These people were genuine, in-the-wild users withvery real motivations, problems, and goals. Through theirpublic descriptions of their experiences these usersgenerated data that informed the design of the tool and alsocreated a portrait of the tool and the community inevolution.

Lately no single issue has dominated the forum postingsthe way the early connection problems did, and we wereinterested to use our feedback surveys to explore currentuser frustrations. The most prominent problems thatemerged from the survey related to conductive thread,which users found difficult or frustrating to use. Here aresome representative quotes:

“I usually end up using a combination of conductivethread and actual wire for my projects…since there's toomuch resistance with conductive thread…” (female designstudent, 20s)

“The problem is that it (the thread) comes apart andmakes it impossible to construct circuits in a small setting.The thread comes undone and shorts out the circuit.”(male design/technology student, 20s)

“…conductive thread obviously has many issues that needto be overcome, including resistance, corrosion, andinsulation.” (female designer/professor, 30s)

Responders also recommended kit additions—including:on/off switches, bend sensors, microphones, and tiltsensors—and kit changes—including: adding conductivepetals to the bottom of the boards as well as the tops,producing an easier-to-use version of the LilyPad withfewer petals, and producing simpler documentation andbetter community support tools:

“Make the lilypad smaller and not as powerful for textilecrafters that only want LEDs to blink - or other suchsmall projects.” (female artist, 40s)

“The community still has a fairly high barrier to entry forbeginners who are avid crafters and don't know much oranything about electronics.” (female designer/engineer,20s)

“One central place to share work/tips would be nice; itseems like there are a few hubs for it, but nothingcentralized.” (female designer/engineer, 20s)

These comments point the way toward futureimprovements and extensions of the kit. We are especiallyinterested in developing ways to support and grow thecommunity through better online resources. Thecommunity is also influencing the LilyPad’s design inother ways, which the next section will explore.

A COMMUNITY INFLUENCES DESIGN, PARTTWO: OPEN SOURCE HARDWAREAs we mentioned earlier, the LilyPad is an open-sourcehardware (OSH) project. This means we have released ourschematic and board layout files under the creativecommons license and people are free to copy and repurposeour designs as long as they cite our previous work and keeptheir designs open-source. In the course of our research wediscovered five new projects that are based on the LilyPad.

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We included the developers of these projects in our survey,and this section will explore their contributions.

LilyPad ExtensionsThe first extension we will discuss is the TeeBoard byGrace Ngai and her colleagues at Hong Kong PolytechnicUniversity [22]. In this project, the designers used theLilyPad to build a textile prototyping platform whichenables people to experiment with e-textiles withoutsewing. Their kit consists of a LilyPad-powered T-shirtwhere input and output modules can be snapped onto thegarment at preset locations. The TeeBoard was designed foreducational purposes and was deployed in severaleducational workshops. The focus of the activity around theTeeBoard is programming and understanding the sensorsand actuators. These developers felt that sewing was tootime consuming and error prone and that it also distractedfrom their educational mission of teaching students aboutprogramming and electronics, so they designed theTeeBoard to overcome these problems:

“The LilyPad kit requires sewing to attach it to thegarment…the TeeBoard solved our problems because itallowed a big degree of reconfigurability and reusability”

Maurin Donneaud, a Paris-based textile and interactiondesigner, developed a different kind of extension. He usedthe published LilyPad OSH board files to design a high-current LED driver board called the LilyPadaone, images ofwhich are shown in Figure 8. These boards look like theycould be members of the LilyPad kit. In contrast to theTeeBoard, the LilyPadaone was developed to be used inparallel with the LilyPad in much the same way as theoriginal pieces—that is, it is also sewn to textiles withconductive thread. The contribution is also different fromthe TeeBoard in that it was designed for individual use bythe designer himself rather than for educationalapplications. In short, this contributor had an entirelydifferent set of motives and objectives and consequentlycontributed to the project in a very different way.

Figure 8. Different versions of Maurin DonneaudʼsLilyPadaone, a high current PWM driver.

Kate Hartman and Rob Faludi developed still another kindof extension. Like Maruin Donneaud, they made use of theOSH board files to design a component that wasn’t yet partof the LilyPad kit, a wireless XBee radio. However they

envisioned it being used in both their own projects and ineducational settings:

“Human bodies don't like to be tethered, so most projectsthat involve sharing body data require some sort ofwireless component…The main reason we developed theLilypad XBee was because we repeatedly saw studentsstrapping XBees on breadboards into their clothing andwe knew there must be a better way.”

Figure 9. Kate Hartmanʼs and Rob Faludiʼs LilyPadXBee, a LilyPad for wireless communication.

The left image in Figure 9 shows the initial version of theLilyPad XBee sewn into a wrist-band. Because their focusincluded an educational/outreach component, thesedesigners weren’t content to produce just one or two boardsfor their own designs. They saw their addition as animportant improvement to the LilyPad kit and wanted theirboards to be widely available. In November of 2008, aftersome collaborative re-designing undertaken by all of thestakeholders, the LilyPad XBee was released as an officialpart of the LilyPad Arduino kit. This official version canbe seen in the right-hand image in Figure 9.

We believe that these examples, especially the last one,nicely illustrate the benefits and potential of open-sourcehardware projects. The LilyPad Arduino is a toolkit thatcan draw on the creativity and labor of a large group ofdesigners and engineers. What we see in these instances isan OSH project evolving and growing the same way thatopen-source software projects usually evolve and grow.The fact that the source code or source design for theproject is available allows an individual to solve her ownparticular problems independently. Once she has solved aproblem she can contribute her solution back to thecommunity and if the solution is something that isvaluable to others, it gets adopted into the coredistribution.

Of course, the entire LilyPad project is also an illustrationof the same point. In designing our kit, we employedArduino’s open source hardware design, tailoring itspecifically to fit our needs. Basing our design on theArduino presented us with several advantages (which nicelyillustrate the benefits of OSH projects in general). Itallowed us to leverage an existing and extensive body ofsoftware and hardware tools, documentation, and support

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and it provided us with an already established communityof users who were capable of quickly adopting our kit.

LilyPad-Inspired KitsTwo of the developers in our survey group were inspired bythe LilyPad to design and produce their own e-textileconstruction kits. In each of these cases, thedevelopers—educational technology researchers—liked theidea of the kit, but preferred working with a differentsoftware or hardware platform, so they simply reinventedthe kit.

The DaisyPIC, shown on the left in Figure 11, wasdeveloped by John Martin and Paul Gardiner. They createda PICAXE version of the LilyPad, explaining theirmotivations this way:

“For UK schools, programming in ‘C’ is not reallyviable. This is why we have engineered our own e-textilecontroller modules to use PICAXE controllers that are inquite widespread use in our schools and which can beprogrammed in flowchart or BASIC.”

Figure 10: The DaisyPIC (left) and Bling Cricket (right).

Fred Martin at the University of Massachusetts Lowelldeveloped the Bling Cricket, a LOGO programmableversion, for similar reasons:

“We have a big investment in the Cricket platform andassociated Cricket Logo programming language, so Iborrowed ideas from the Lilypad in designing the BlingCricket. Cricket Logo is not better than Arduino/C, it'sjust more familiar to my user community.”

These examples show how the ideas and materialsintroduced by the LilyPad are being adopted and dispersedin a completely different, but potentially equally powerfulway and we are excited to see how these projects develop.

CONCLUSIONThis paper has presented a preliminary portrait of thecommunity that has grown up around the LilyPad Arduinotoolkit. We will now attempt to summarize our experiencesand what we have learned, grouping our reflections intotwo broad categories: broadening participation and therelationship between research, design, and dissemination.

Broadening ParticipationMargolis and Fisher’s groundbreaking study on gender incomputer science was titled “Unlocking the Clubhouse”[21]. This phrase provides a good description of the paththat most projects aimed at broadening participation take. The story behind the research goes something like this:traditional computing culture is a boys’ club that isunfriendly to women and we need to find ways to unlockthis clubhouse, to make it accessible to women.

Our experience suggests a different approach, one we callBuilding New Clubhouses. Instead of trying to fit peopleinto existing engineering cultures, we want to spark andsupport new cultures; we want to build new clubhouses.Our experiences have led us to believe that perhaps theproblem is not that communities are prejudiced orexclusive but that they’re limited in breadth—bothintellectually and culturally. Some of the mostilluminating research in diversity in STEM has found thatwomen and other minorities don’t join engineering andsimilar communities not because they are intimidated orunqualified but rather because they’re simply uninterestedin these disciplines [30].

Our goal is to question traditional disciplinary boundariesand to expand disciplines to make room for more diverseinterests and passions. Our aim is not to glorify fabriccrafts or fashion or to demean traditional engineeringculture. We are simply interested in providing alternativepathways to the rich intellectual possibilities ofcomputation.

We hope that our research shows that disciplines can growboth technically and culturally when we re-envision and re-contextualize them. When we build new clubhouses, new,surprising, and valuable things happen.

Research, design, and disseminationThe other important lessons we learned from our work onthis project relate to the relationships between user-focusedresearch, design/engineering research, and dissemination.These aspects of technology development are often quitedecoupled. Designers and engineers may or may notcommunicate with researchers who conduct user studies,and insights from research, design, and engineeringcommunities may or may not ever make it into products.

A combination of new communication, manufacturing, anddistribution technologies is making it increasingly possiblefor research groups to conduct studies that span all of theseareas. We believe that there are tremendous opportunitiesin working at this intersection. By releasing the LilyPadas a commercial open-source tool, we created a real-worldgroup of users that is creatively employing the kit andcontributing new work back into the project in anassortment of interesting ways. This community nowpresents us with fertile ground for a host of researchprojects that could yield insights into: the relationshipbetween a tool’s design and its adoption, the formation andevolution of collaborative communities, and the formationof new engineering cultures.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThanks to Mike Eisenberg, Nwanua Elumeze, NathanSeidle, the Arduino team, and Mark Gross for their advice,contributions and conversation. This work was funded inpart by the National Science Foundation (award no. EIA-0326054) and the MIT Media Lab consortium.

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