Title: Sustaining Innovation Communities: Understanding Socio-Technical Factors that Drive Organizational Sustainability of Makerspaces

Mizan Rahman

Ph.D. Candidate in Human-Centered Computing (HCC) 

School of Interactive Computing

Georgia Institute of Technology

Date: Monday, March 16th, 2026

Time: 10am - 12pm EST

Location: TSRB room 204 (IC Collaboration Space), or Zoom

Committee:

• Dr. Rosa Arriaga (advisor) – School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Dr. W. Keith Edwards – School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Dr. Richard Henneman – School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Dr. Judith Odili Uchidiuno  – School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Dr. Udaya Lakshmi – Xbox Research

Abstract:

Makerspaces are community-operated innovation centers that promote creativity, learning, and entrepreneurship. Despite their growing role in local innovation ecosystems, many of them struggle to survive, and closures can disrupt communities, dissolve volunteer capacity, and halt public programs. This dissertation examines how makerspaces achieve organizational sustainability. Drawing on three and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork across multiple U.S. makerspaces involving interviews, participant observation, and analysis of digitally mediated interaction, I present four studies that together characterize how socio-technical factors drive organizational sustainability of makerspaces

Study 1 defines sustainability in this context and develops a multidimensional framework that conceptualizes it as a dynamic system of interacting elements: people, community, culture, management, finance, and processes. The framework’s central insight — that “people come for the tools but stay for the community" and that culture holds the community together. Study 2 examines the “people" dimension of this framework, identifying socio-technical factors that broaden membership. Study 3 and Study 4 examined culture, the factor that emerged as the most critical for sustainability, analyzing howit is perceived through interviews and how it is practiced through analysis of the digitally mediated interaction.

Building from these findings, the dissertation contributes design implications for communication systems that support makerspaces as volunteer-run commons. I propose design guidelines that reduce friction in core cultural practices and outline how AI can function as cultural scaffolding by providing structured prompts, surfacing relevant community memory, and routing requests while keeping members in control. Together, these contributions offer theory, evidence, and design directions for sustaining makerspaces through socio-technical practice.

Thank You.

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Mizan Rahman

Ph.D. Candidate - Human-Centered Computing

Advisor: Dr. Rosa Arriaga | Ubicomp Health and Wellness Lab

Research Interest: Sustainability of the Innovation Centers

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3675761

Georgia Institute of Technology