Equipment Usage

Technical Equipment can be expensive and, therefore, a challenge for people to own. I feel that easy access to technical equipment is essential to feeling comfortable with it and to getting the most out of it. I would like the equipment that DANM owns to be available to as many people as possible and to never sit in a storage room. For if the equipment is in storage no one is building a relationship with it. This leads one to assume that "checking out" the equipment to people is the answer, unfortunately it is very common for people to get equipment and then to effectively "store" it in their house or car. The equipment may now be distributed but it is still in storage. This idea has lead me to the thought that what we need is a very easy way for equipment to flow between people that will use it. Here are the guidelines for my perfered equipment checkout system:

Transparency

All reservations and checkouts should be available to all the users with a description of what the person is using the equipment for. This helps to build an awareness of use and a community around the equipment.

Shared Authority

A minimal amount of authoritative process. All users manage all things. One user can put something on reserve and any other user can check that item out to that user. This is effectively a two-person = authority. This assumes that each user is highly trustworthy. And as a member of a community that should be the case. People that are not trustworthy would loose their membership to the community. A jurying system may be used to manage users abilities to check things out.

Restrictions

Hopefully few restrictions to what can be checked out will be necessary, but some people may feel that they can hold onto things for long periods of time. And others may not feel comfortable asking for that equipment back. Therefore a maximum time period will be used to help the flow of equipment.

Availability

This checkout system should be available from anywhere, esp. since users will check things in/out/in to each other.

Inventory and Equipment Status

Some items, say a camera, have multiple things in their bag. It will be important to allow users to do inventories of items and to log that inventory process in the system. This will allow any person, including the equipment manager, the ability to check equipment that has not been seen in a while. A question like "How is video camera 2 doing?" can be answered by requesting an Inventory/Equipment Status check which will be forced then next time it passes hands.

Notifications

This checkout system should notify people that the piece of equipment is due back to the checkout room or to the next reserver in enough time for the user to return the equipment.

• Fun to Use This system should be fun and easy to use. Probably the most difficult aspect of the design is to make this system a pleasure to use. So that using it is as little like a chore as possible.