Anna Kaziunas France | Make: Magazine 3D Printer Usability Case Study

The Challenge

During the 3D printer boom of 2012, Make: Magazine's staff were constantly being asked a trio of questions:

"What 3D printer should I buy?"
"What printers are the most user friendly?
"What printer is best for my situation (makerspace, classroom, or kids)?"

To answer these queries, Make: began a 3D printer testing program whose results were published in a special yearly issue focused on 3D printing and digital fabrication.

My Role

I ran Make’s in-house 3D printer, scanner, and software product testing, collaborating with a team of experts that I assembled. I created user personas to help guide our research and compiled and analyzed both qualitative and quantitative data sets in order to benchmark machine usability rankings (for both hardware and software). I also coordinated and edited all of the numerous 3D printer reviews and the vast majority of special section articles. Our team presented our findings in Make: Magazine’s special yearly digital fabrication issues for 2014 and 2015.

Note that each issue came out in the late fall and was actually named for the preceeding year, so although the testing I worked on was conducted in 2013 and 2014, the titles of Make's 3D printer issues are 2014 and 2015.

Models Used to Test Print Quality

The models that we used to test the 3D printers, were designed for Make: Magazine by the testing team I ran and are available on the file sharing sites Thingiverse and YouMagine. We also wrote up how to score the 3D prints.

These models, pictured below in the "What is Print Quality" article, test the following mechanical characteristics of 3D printers: