From DIY Tutorials to DIY Recipes

While online DIY (do-it-yourself) tutorials have increasingly gained interest both at CHI and in the DIY and Maker communities, there is not a lot of research concerning the qualities and drawbacks of the current formats used to share DIY knowledge online. Drawing on our current study of DIY tutorials, in this paper we propose an experimentation in which we ‘translate’ DIY tutorials from their current formats to a more traditional cookbook style format. We present two tutorials – the Cardboard Desklamp and the DIY Cellphone – with their translation and discuss what we learned from the translation process.