Steve Turbek

"Mechanical Library is a open education project to inspire students to understand how the physical world is designed and made.

It includes:

• A “wall of mechanisms” museum exhibit of the 36-72 most interesting and common mechanisms, such as the Universal Joint, that make our world work.
• Mechanical-Library.org is the companion website. Each mechanism has a QR code that brings up the page to explain how it works, with videos, 3D printable models and augmented reality models. "

"Physical product design is increasingly shaped by designers who only know how to work with screens. Tangible interface design — creating objects that sense, respond, and communicate through physical interaction — remains underrepresented in design curricula, while demand for it grows across automotive, medical, consumer electronics, and accessibility applications.

The Tangible Interfaces Lab is developing an open-source curriculum to close that gap. Through ""learning by making,"" the curriculum guides college design students and self-directed practitioners through the concepts, constraints, and possibilities of physical interaction design — from input methods and sensors to feedback and form.

Pratt Industrial Design graduate students Maria Myers and Chad Ruble will demonstrate their ""design challenges"": original design briefs that prompt students to build working hardware/software products as design solutions. Visitors can engage directly with the briefs and the physical prototypes they produced.

Later this year, Tangible-Interfaces.com will publish the full curriculum alongside a sourcebook of tested hardware and software — lowering the steep technical barrier that currently limits tangible interface design to specialists.

Aligned with SDG 9, this project treats design education as infrastructure: broadening who can participate in physical product innovation matters not just pedagogically, but ethically — as the tools that shape human experience increasingly require fluency in both digital and physical interaction."

"The Mechanical Library is an open-source museum exhibit and curriculum that introduces middle and high school students to mechanical engineering. It was made in partnership with NYC First, a leading STEM education not for profit, that supports underserved NYC public school students.

Each motorized mechanism has a QR code to a web page that shows how the mechanisms are used with photos, videos, 3D, & lego models.

The cabinet stands 6 feet tall, by 32"" wide and 12"" deep, with information panels on either side measuring 24"" wide. The cabinet runs on normal 120v power, drawing under 5 amps.

Find out more at Mechanical-Library.org"