Measuring impact
The Fixometer is a tool we use for measuring the impact of our repair events (devices fixed, waste and CO2 emissions averted) as well as to gain insights about reliability and repairability of different types and brands of device.
The Fixometer
For our community repair events we use the Fixometer, a purpose-built web application, to collect data on the things that we fix. We log all the fixes that we attempt — successful or not. We collect data points such as the model and brand of the device, what the problem was, whether we could fix it, and whether spare parts were required. We then combine this data with our own research data of lifecycle assessments for electrical and electronics products. From these two datasets we produce detailed analysis on the positive environmental and social impacts of our work.
See https://therestartproject.org/fixometer/ for more information on our work on this so far, and if you'd like to see the source code for the app itself go to: https://github.com/TheRestartProject/Fixometer
Open Repair Data Standard
We want to do more with data and the insights that it facilitates, so we are currently aiming to scale up the collection of data through various partnerships: with other community repair networks, and with trade associations of independent commercial repairers.
For this reason, we helped found the Open Repair Alliance in October 2017. We envisage a rapid growth in the data collected, and we wish to ensure this data is open and interoperable. As such, we are building a standard for the collection and sharing of open data on electronics repair. We are building the standard such that data collection on repair is open and interoperable, and can be used for impactful statistical analysis and visualisation.
See http://openrepair.org for more information.