The Challenges Of Taking Physical Play Digital

MakerBrane was all about mixing construction systems together, so we developed an online 3D builder to allow anyone to create their own designs, even if they didn’t have all the pieces in real life. It would have been relatively easy to make a simple LEGO builder, but little did we know how difficult the exercise would be to design and code a universal builder. The result is the free to use 3D MakerSpace, in perpetual beta, but still used in 1,000+ schools around the world to teach 3D design, story telling, and STEM to kids. This post will describe the UX/UI and technical challenges that we tried to overcome, some with more success than others.