How-To: Maker Faire Booth Design

From the workshop put on by the Mini Maker Faire Seattle team (hey, that includes me!):

On March 3rd, we hosted a workshop to help local makers design their booths and get ideas for interactive exhibits and hands-on activities. We will repeat the class in late April or early May. Here are some highlights from the workshop:

Part 1: Meet the Team and General Booth Design

Key points: A few signs will help attendees understand your project, but don’t let the signs form a barrier between you and the public. Open shelving gives you more vertical space to display parts, projects, tools and components. Practice setting up your exhibit at home and test your hands-on activities with friends and kids.

Part 2: Examples of interactive exhibits

Key points: Let people see and touch. Show some interesting raw materials, show what things look like in-process, half-way done, and parts that broke during your design trials. Let the public experience the process of making with all of their senses! Great hands-on activities are ones that simplify the process to their essential components or symbolize complex things with simple analogs, for example make strings of beads as an analog for protein chains.

Part 3: Hackerspace Booths and Group Exhibits

Exhibit what a group of geeks can accomplish with a little sharing of ideas, tools, and space.