POSE: Phase II: Transitioning AdaCAD to an Open-Source Ecosystem to Catalyze STEM Textile Applications

Textiles are used in many important applications, from clothing and wearable devices that sense the body to advanced materials in airplanes. Crafts people and scientists / engineers working on these materials often bring different approaches and do not always share a common understanding of how textiles are designed and made. This gap makes it difficult to fully investigate the potential of textiles and the techniques for manufacturing and utilizing them. This project focuses on a digital tool called AdaCAD that helps bridge the gap by offering resources for the collaborative design and sharing of woven textile designs. The project expands the community designing textiles by highlighting real-world examples, offering learning opportunities, and creating ways for more people to contribute. By building a larger, more connected community, the project aims to make textile knowledge more accessible and support new innovations across fields. This project introduces a series of outreach activities and programs to help transition AdaCAD from an open-source project to a self-sustaining open-source ecosystem. The platform currently serves approximately 400 registered users and is already being integrated into research and education. The goal of the proejct is to transition AdaCAD from an early adopter community to a distributed, sustainable ecosystem of users, contributors, and maintainers by incentivizing contributions and focusing on the integration of the software into curriculum for teaching textiles design. Key activities include expanding the user base through public-facing talks and conference engagement, supporting pathways from user to contributor via workshops, microgrants, residencies, and a summer school, and formalizing governance through an advisory board composed of experts, maintainers, and core team members. These efforts will establish the technical and organizational infrastructure necessary for long-term sustainability and broader impact. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.