FabLab Tap Card Profiles

The FabLab tap-card project replaced classic business cards inside a maker community. Instead of swapping paper, each of the 34 members carries an NFC card that opens their own live profile page.

The experience is the point: profile sharing dropped from roughly 30 seconds of manual card exchange to under 3 seconds per interaction.

Because the profile lives in the application rather than on the card, updates sync everywhere immediately. That removed reprints entirely and cut related material costs by an estimated 90%.

I ran a 2-week pilot with the FabLab team, iterating through 3 rounds of feedback before handover — the version that shipped reflected how people actually used it.

• Deployed to 34 FabLab members for instant profile sharing via a single contactless tap.
• Reduced profile-sharing time from ~30 s to under 3 s per interaction.
• Enabled real-time profile updates across shared cards, eliminating reprints and cutting material costs by ~90%.
• Built the React front end, Node.js/Express API and MongoDB data layer, packaged with Docker.
• Completed a 2-week pilot with 3 rounds of feedback before final handover.

Tap to share

Each member carries an NFC card. A single contactless tap opens their profile page — ready to show, and always current, without an app install.

Live profiles, no reprints

Profiles are edited in the web app and synced to every shared card instantly, so members never need a new physical card after a role or project change.