[WIP - open doc, pls reach out to liz to get access to edit! moved to notion from gdocs due to nicer formatting here. the goal is to make the resource for us maker types and to learn and geek out together - none of us know the whole stack, but can teach each other and the broader community! and then make some wonderful projects]
Welcome! This project was inspired by a week at the Scalable HCI Symposium held in January 2025 in Shenzhen. Through factory visits, walks through Huaqiangbei, and countless conversations, I was struck by the sheer scale of how our digital world is made.
We live in a digital world enabled by millions of people worldwide - working in everything from mining raw materials to manufacturing core components and integrated circuits (ICs), from assembling final products to refurbishing and reselling them. It is built off the financial foundations of thousands of conglomerates and is continuously innovated upon by hundreds of companies, startups, academic labs, and design practices.
I personally work at the top of this chain of electronic creation. The questions I ask are “How will [novel form factor] make someone feel more empowered and inspired?” I probe questions of interaction and emotion, currently at the Ai hardware startup Humane. But there are parts of this stack - electronics and supply chain, for example - that I don’t always get to explore deeply.
This guide is my way of exploring these areas with friends and collaborators (you!), where we teach and learn from each other and consolidate the best resources on the internet.
This guide exists to provide a clearer and more approachable picture of the systems that bring consumer electronics to life. By understanding these systems, we gain the power to envision and create the next generation of hardware—tools that not only make life easier, but also more meaningful. And in doing so, we see more of the beauty in the products of the everyday.
Each section has an initial outline to get started. We are all experts on different parts of this, so feel free to flesh out + change what you are confident about. Assume that people reading this are techies in some way (ex: swe, hw, designers, creative technologists). Feel free to use GPT and to just post links + bullet points. This is more of a practice of curation.
To get edit access send a note to Liz with your email!
This guide explores the journey of how modern devices come to life. Let’s make more fun hardware!
Electrons: The Theoretical Basics
Materials: Where Components Begin
Core Components: The Building Blocks