Fritzing: a tool for advancing electronic prototyping for designers

ABSTRACT

Today a growing community of DIY-practitioners, artists and designers are using microcontroller-based toolkits to express their concepts for digital artifacts by building them. However, as these prototypes are generally constructed using solder-free technologies, they are often fragile and unreliable. This means a huge burden of care and upkeep for these inventions when they are either exhibited or sold.

We present a software application called Fritzing which allows artists, designers and DIY-tinkerers to prepare their hardware inventions for production. Through an interface metaphor based on the typical workflow of the target group, Fritzing has proven its ability to provide useful support in the steps following the invention of an interactive artifact.

Fritzing serves also as a tool for documenting these interactive artifacts. As sharing of knowledge has been a driving force within this new DIY-movement, there is a need for a consistent and readable form of documentation which Fritzing can provide.

Fritzing has also proven to be a useful tool in teaching electronics to people without an engineering background.

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INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
design tools, physical interaction design, prototyping