Quantitative Analysis Of Community Development And Usage Patterns In A Newly-Established Academic Makerspace

At a regional level, makerspaces can foster co-innovation. For this purpose, the development of a community with different stakeholders has to be promoted. Knowing the community and its usage patterns is an important factor for developing the makerspace and its offerings, thus providing regional stakeholders with a suitable environment for co-innovation. In this paper, we present the results of our activities aimed at analyzing community development and usage patterns in our newly-established makerspace. After conceptualizing and developing necessary architecture components, data were analyzed with a quantitative approach using descriptive statistics. Results show i.a. that most users were private at the beginning, while student registrations significantly increased in the second year. Wood and metal processing are prevalently used by private users, enterprises being more active in laser cutting and students in 3D printing. These insights can play an important contribution to assessing the launch phase of the makerspace as well as to promote collaborative projects in the future.