(De)composing Craft: An Elementary Grammar for Sharing Expertise in Craft Workflows

Abstract: Craft practices rely on evolving archives of skill and knowledge, developed through generations of craftspeople experimenting with designs, materials, and techniques. Better documentation of these practices enables the sharing of knowledge and expertise between sites and generations. However, most documentation focuses solely on the linear steps leading to final artifacts, neglecting the tacit knowledge necessary to improvise, or adapt workflows to meet the unique demands of each craft project. This omission limits knowledge sharing and reduces craft to a mechanical endeavor, rather than a sophisticated way of seeing, thinking, and doing. Drawing on expert interviews and literature from HCI, CSCW and the social sciences, we develop an elementary grammar to document improvisational actions of real-world craft practices. We demonstrate the utility of this grammar with an interface called CraftLink that can be used to analyze expert videos and semi-automatically generate documentation to convey material and contextual variations of craft practices. Our user study with expert crocheters (N=7) using this interface evaluates our grammar's effectiveness in capturing and sharing expert knowledge with other craftspeople, offering new pathways for computational systems to support collaborative archives of knowledge and practice within communities.