“Tinkering is fooling around directly with phenomena, with tools and materials. It’s thinking with your hands and learning through doing. It’s slowing down and getting curious about the mechanics and mysteries of everyday stuff around you. It’s whimsical, enjoyable, fraught with dead ends, frustrating, and, ultimately, about inquiry.” (Wilkinson and Petrich, The Art of Tinkering, 2014)

Tinkering is designing by trying things out as opposed to the standard process of “Research > Design > Realization. This way of designing starts with doing rather than first thinking it all out and then making it.

In Tinkering, you start working on your idea without doing any research beforehand. That idea changes as you go along, continuously testing your new ideas. We work primarily with physical materials such as cardboard, laser lights, marbles or wire. The tools we use include the soldering iron, glue gun, break-off knife and the 3D printer.

Tinkering with light

work by minor student Nina Toedter

Direct vs indirect manipulation

work by minor student Nina Toedter

Tinkering with the Riso

work by minor student Nina Toedter