MakerBot’s direction in 2016 has seen us take on more of a role in not only the Professional space but also the Educational space. Representing Thingiverse, I worked along with the Educational team within MakerBot to see how we could bring value to educators who wanted to not only find classroom-ready content but also to share it with other educators and work to expand on our previously launched Thingiversity (see Dribbble for an example).

Over the course of a few months, we talked with numerous teachers to see how they currently use 3D printing in their curriculum or how they would use it in the future. The key take away was the browsing and sharing of lesson plans around 3D printing. We took to see how we could add this value to Thingiverse while also trying to launch the update in time for the new school year.

For our MVP, we launched a brand new landing page (replacing Thingiversity) to the website that allows teachers to easily browse for classroom-ready content, find Groups to talk with other educators and offer more resources to get started. We also added a new section to the upload experience for educators looking to share their lesson plan ready content.

The future for EDU on Thingiverse is wide open and we can’t wait to see how educators will use this new feature and work with them to grow it.