Explore, document, and share your DIY creations

Presented by Nizâmouddine GANGAT (@GangatN) & Aymeric SEGURET

Good morning ladies and gentlemen

Thank you all for comming here today

For those of you who don't know us

My name is Nizâmouddine GANGAT and this is my colleague Aymeric SEGURET

Contents

• What is it
• Create and share your project
• Socials aspects
• Some projects

What I'd like to present to you today is INSTRUCTABLES.COM

This topic is particularly relevant to those of you who are curious or want to be more creative everyday

The aim of this presentation is to give you some interesting information about the website instructables.com

Our presentation falls in 4 main parts:

• To start with, We will describe what it is
• Then, we will mention some point about how to create and share, what you make
• After that, we will consider the socials aspects of the site
• We will end with some exemple of projects

We will try to answer all of your questions after the presentation.

Let's now, move on the first part

• Do It Yourself (DIY) Projects “ Do it yourself is the method of building, modifying, or repairing something without the aid of experts or professionals. ” (Wikipedia)
• step by step collaboration
• 2005, by Eric Wilhelm & Saul Griffith

So, let me first give you a brief overview of what it is

Instructables.com is a website specializing in DIY projects (I quote from wikipedia : “ Do it yourself is the method of building, modifying, or repairing something without the aid of experts or professionals. ”)

It is dedicated to step-by-step collaboration among members to build a variety of projects

It was created and launched in August 2005 by Eric Wilhelm and Saul Griffith after they was graduated from MIT

• Variety of projects
• Original content : electronics, cooking, kiting
• now : large array of categories...

As i(/he) mention(s) before, there is a variety of DIY projects on instructables.com

The original content focused mostly on such projects as buiding electronics, cooking, kiting, and bicycle projects

The scope of the project has expanded to include a larger array of categories including Food, Living, Outside, Tech, Play and Workshop

4 parts menu:

So, to interact with all these projects, the website have a navigation menu divided into 4 parts

The first item is an explore button which allow you to view all projects organised by theme

The second item is a Create button where you can share what you make

The 3rd item is a Contest button where you can make challenges on a specific theme

The last item is a Community button. We will talk about this functionnality in a next part

This is how the main page looks

You can see the navigation menu, a sponsored topic, the search field and the featured projects

This brings me to the end of the first point.

• Register
• Create your project
• Add instructables (steps)
• That's All!

Now i will talk about project creation and share

First step consists in a classic register (you can also use your facebook id to login)

Then, create your project by choosing name and category

And Add your instructables! Instructables are step by step description of the project you want to share

That's All!

• Use visual aids!
• Others members can help you

Don't hesitate to abuse of visual aids (photos, diagrams, videos, animation)

Remember that there is surely lot of people interested in your project and can help you

Big Community (facebook: 176K, twitter: 34K)

who can:

• interact through comment sections
• rate for quality
• fork your project
• upload videos and slideshows

**** Now let me give you an overview of the social aspect

As he said before, there is a very big community who use instructables.com . There is about 176 thousand followers on facebook and 34 thousand on twitter

And this communities can interact through comment sections below each instructable step of projects (as well in topic forum)

Everyone can comment and rate for quality

You can replicates ("fork") a project, make your modifications and share with the rest of the communities. This is very insteresting for people who want to enhance an old project.

You can also upload videos and slideshows to help people understand a poorly documented project

Make contests

• Each month
• Sponsored or not
• Get PRIZES!

Vote for your favorite !

There is new contests every months

Which are sponsored or not

And you can get prizes (It's not necessarily the 1rst winner)

And vote for your favourite project to support the owners

Forum

• Help...
• ...and be helped
• Also : Question/answer system

You can participate to the forum by helping people...

Or be helped

There is also a Question/Answer system (like Yahoo Answers) which could be interesting

Join groups who share your interests !

And last but not least, join groups who share your interests !

That’s all I wanted to say about the social aspects

Now let see some projects from instructables.com

Processors hairbrush

The first project is a processor hairbrush for the gekiest of you

the tutorial shows how to build, however i do not advise to brush your hair with it.

How To Solve The Rubiks Cube

Another tutorial that explains how to solve the rubiks-cube, and I think many have left before completion

Build Your Own Electric Guitar!

Next explains how to build your own guitar

Coffee Table pi

Or how to build your own arcade table, we all dream to have possibility to make a little play of pacman in the middle of the meal, and with nothing more than a raspberry.

The Most Useless Machine EVER

Finally, the most useless machine ever...

This is kind of tutorial you can find on the site.

We now nearing the end of our presentation