Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the way object data on Thingiverse changes over time, analyzing the relationships among views, downloads, likes, makes, remixes and comments over 500 days.

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 30 of the most popular things on Thingiverse were tracked between August 26, 2018 and January 7, 2020, with data collected about the different interactions at five intervals.

Findings

Highlights include: “#3DBenchy” became the first thing to reach one million downloads during this study. The “Xbox One controller mini wheel” achieved the highest documented download rate of 698 downloads per day. The average conversion rate from downloads to makes for all 30 things was one make for every 474 downloads at the start of the study, declining to one make for every 784 downloads by the conclusion.

Research limitations/implications

With over 1.6 million things on Thingiverse, this study focused on an exclusive group of things that have gained significant attention from makers and does not represent most things on the platform.

Practical implications

Although often considered a novelty or niche maker community, this research shows that things on Thingiverse are achieving popularity comparable to digital music, video and imagery, and a large ecosystem of things has been growing that has implications for designers, manufacturers, supply chain managers and universal popular culture.

Originality/value

This is the first study to track the digital behaviors of 3D printable things over time, revealing new knowledge about how people interact with content and the scale of these interactions.

中文翻译：

---

Thingiverse的500天：对30种流行3D打印事物的纵向研究

目的

本文的目的是深入了解Thingiverse上的对象数据随时间变化的方式，分析500天之内的视图，下载，喜欢，制作，重新混合和注释之间的关系。

设计/方法/方法

在2018年8月26日至2020年1月7日之间，总共跟踪了Thingiverse上30项最受欢迎的内容，并以五个间隔收集了有关不同交互的数据。

发现

重点包括：在本研究中，“＃3DBenchy”成为第一个达到百万下载量的应用程序。“ Xbox One控制器迷你轮”实现了每天698次下载的最高记录下载率。在研究开始时，所有30种事物从下载到制造的平均转换率是每474次下载获得1次转换，结论是下降到每784​​次下载获得1次转换。

研究局限/意义

本研究在Thingiverse上拥有超过160万个内容，因此该研究集中于一组独特的内容，这些内容已引起制造商的广泛关注，并且不代表平台上的大多数内容。

实际影响

尽管通常被认为是新奇或利基制造商社区，但这项研究表明，Thingiverse上的事物正在获得与数字音乐，视频和图像相当的知名度，并且庞大的事物生态系统正在不断发展，这对设计师，制造商，供应链经理和普遍的大众文化。

创意/价值

这是第一项追踪3D可打印事物随时间变化的数字行为的研究，揭示了有关人们如何与内容进行交互以及这些交互的规模的新知识。