One of the most important aspects we focused on, both in the FABUI and in the Development of the Hardware, was human interactions.
The best interfaces -at least for us- are the ones that do not force the user into a specific way of thinking the application but are equally able to teach the user how to use it (both from an Hardware and Software point of view).
This of course was very limited during the Alpha stage, and we basically had everything tied together by intangible rules like “before scanning lets tilt the build platform” and “after you scan, get the resulting files and remember to tilt the build platform”.

The FABtotum is the first attempt on hybrid manufacturing and digital acquisition in a desktop-friendly device. We could not resist: we had to make the software and the hardware interact in new ways.

The result of this endeavour (wich is basically a mix of hardware and software design choices) is something best defined as a mix of industrial design, software interaction design, software user experience.
The result at wich we are aiming can be fairly represented by the User Guide, wich will be digitally available on the website once the FABtotum Personal Fabricator is released.

Introducing new Users to the functionalities (many, admittedly) of the FABtotum was not an easy task.”What is Auto Bed leveling”, “Can I use it during 3D milling?”, “How do I machine a piece of wood?”, “Can I 3d print and Mill at the same time?”. All these are legit questions anyone would ask if not guided and assisted in the process.
The first part of the manual will guide people in the basic knowledge of what you get to do in that  small cube.

Of Course: all of this is consistently portrayed in the FAB UI as well, with a consistent set of icons,with tooltips and quick action menus. But the first thing to teach is to start the FABtotum for the first time and get in.
This section is also part of the welcome kit/getting started inside the cardboard shipping box.

We love concise informations, so the approach we used in most of the manuals and the FAB UI is task-based: to get A you must do 1,2,3, where each number is an operation the user can recognize for it’s use.in other words i’ts much better to not force the user to do a set of (apparently) meaningless and small operations, but to teach him all the smaller (always useful) tasks with a clear focus on the goal.

Getting on the topic of Human interactions, we got to experiment with onboard sensors (endstops,camera,bed sensor) and sensorial feedbacks (lights,RGB ambient lights,sounds).
Third party developers will surely like the way you can interact with the final user, but for starting out we kept everything as minimal and simple as possible.

For example you can auto bed level only if the plane is properly positioned (triggering a function). In a probing operation users will get prompted to a wizard that will actively check for all the requisites in different moments, for example “front door is open”, and “now remove the plane”, until the action is actually performed in real time.

This gives us the potential of guiding and correcting user mistakes without being too much intrusive in his experience: we simply set a wizard with steps for each operation.
You’ll know in wich steps you are and what is happening, and if the hardware is correctly set-up for that.
example: if you choose to Auto Bed level and the plane is not positioned. You’ll be prompted to position the plane…and the FABtotum will be able to tell if the build plane is in additive or subtractive mode, AND if the Gcode you will be printing is a 3d print or a subtractive job. in other words: consistent.
the FABUI and the Hardware is constantly kept consistent to each other, and this is great to build any respectable user experience.

Digital acquisition is the most complex part of the FABtotum and we want to make improvements in this department too. We are still still far from a “click to replicate” approach but we are also miles away from the original concept expressed in the alpha (with scan to poit cloud alone.)
The hardest part is to make people confident with the scanning procedures, wich result expect, what movements and hardware is involved.
This, as before, is done by checking the hardware and guiding the user.

Other aspects covered by the manual as well as the FABUI are cleaning and safety (under maintainance on the FABUI, in this case).
These instructions are also guided as wizards.The “Unload spool” function, for example, is something relatively complex if you look it from the software and hardware point of view, but it’s pretty simple as a single click operation with hardware checks in realtime and user visual feedbacks.

Designing human-machine interactions is a de-facto industrial design topic, but it involves software, firmware, engineering and some patience.

As usual, hit the comment section on the forums to let us know what you think!
FABteam