Material for Design

Data is braided into the fabric of our everyday lives. Our interactions, entanglements, and encounters with data run deep, occur with and without technology, and exist in physical and digital contexts. For some, data is seen as a vital component for the utilitarian improvement of said everyday lives. To garner, aggregate, analyze, and communicate metrics, insights, and knowledge underpins how we see data and the technology that interacts with it.

However, the data-interaction design space is expanding. Recent and ongoing research is challenging current conventions and proposing alternative narratives. These alternative narratives explore a variety of concepts and values such as ephemerality [12,13], decay [9], negotiation [3], diffraction and (re)interpretation [4,6,18,19], subjectivity [7], locality [14], invisibility [5,8], and the interaction with analog data. When these narratives are embodied in design “outcomes” they allow us to experience other possible worlds where data is not only a straightforward means to an end but a malleable material that can be shaped to create a diverse range of experiences. These worlds do not only question what we can do with data, but what we can expect of the technology that collects, handles, and expresses these data. What alternative possible worlds of human-data-technology already exist? What design strategies and tactics can enable diverse uses and expressions of data in our everyday lives? What are the potential design outcomes when data we create and express need not be immediately practically “useful”?

How can we will critically examine these questions by mapping the expanding, critical, and alternative data design space? This mapping, invites to contributors to give examples from areas that include (but are not limited to): data physicalization [10], data fiction and folklore [4], slow or temporal data interaction [15,16], or somaesthetic data [1]. By doing so, we continue to contribute towards data to becoming a rich contribution to the material for design repertoire [2,11,17].

References

[1] Miquel Alfaras, Vasiliki Tsaknaki, Pedro Sanches, et al. 2020. From Biodata to Somadata. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376684

[2] Jesse Josua Benjamin, Arne Berger, Nick Merrill, and James Pierce. 2021. Machine Learning Uncertainty as a Design Material: A Post-Phenomenological Inquiry. Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445481

[3] Yu-ting Cheng, Mathias Funk, Wenn-Chieh Tsai, and Lin-Lin Chen. 2019. Peekaboo Cam Designing an Observational Camera for Home Ecologies Concerning Privacy. Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference, ACM, 823–836. https://doi.org/10.1145/3322276.3323699

[4] Audrey Desjardins and Heidi R. Biggs. 2021. Data Epics: Embarking on Literary Journeys of Home Internet of Things Data. Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445241

[5] Audrey Desjardins, Heidi R Biggs, Cayla Key, and Jeremy E Viny. 2020. IoT Data in the Home: Observing Entanglements and Drawing New Encounters. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376342

[6] Audrey Desjardins and Timea Tihanyi. 2019. ListeningCups: A Case of Data Tactility and Data Stories. Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference – DIS ’19, ACM Press, 147–160. https://doi.org/10.1145/3322276.3323694

[7] Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein. 2020. Data Feminism

[8] William W. Gaver, John Bowers, Kirsten Boehner, et al. 2013. Indoor Weather Stations: Investigating a Ludic Approach to Environmental HCI Through Batch Prototyping. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI ’13, ACMPress, 3451–3460. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466474

[9] Rebecca Gulotta, William Odom, Jodi Forlizzi, and Haakon Faste. 2013. Digital Artifacts as Legacy: Exploring the Lifespan and Value of Digital Data. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, 1813–1822. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466240

[10] Yvonne Jansen, Pierre Dragicevic, Petra Isenberg, et al. 2015. Opportunities and Challenges for Data Physicalization. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI ’15, ACM Press, 3227–3236. https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702180

[11] Elvin Karana, Bahareh Barati, and Elisa Giaccardi. 2020. Living Artefacts: Conceptualizing
Livingness as a Material Quality in Everyday Artefacts. International Journal of Design. 14, 3: 37–53

[12] Kyung Jin Kim, Sangsu Jang, Bomin Kim, Hyosun Kwon, and Young-Woo Park. muRedder: Shredding Speaker for Ephemeral Musical Experience. Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference – DIS ’19, ACM Press, 127–134. https://doi.org/10.1145/3322276.3322362

[13] Matthew Lee-Smith, Tracy Ross, Martin Maguire, Fung Po Tso, Jeremy Morley, and Stefano Cavazzi. 2019. The Data Hungry Home: Defining, Populating, Feeding, and Beyond. Proceedings of the Halfway to the Future Symposium 2019, ACM, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1145/3363384.3363390

[14] Yanni Alexander Loukissas. 2019. All Data Are Local: Thinking Critically in a Data-Driven Society. The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11543.001.0001

[15] William Odom and Tijs Duel. 2018. On the Design of OLO Radio: Investigating Metadata as a Design Material. Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI ’18, ACM Press, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173678

[16] William Odom, Ron Wakkary, Jeroen Hol, et al. 2019. Investigating Slowness as a Frame to Design Longer-Term Experiences with Personal Data: A Field Study of Olly. Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems – CHI ’19, ACM Press, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300264

[17] Franziska Louise Pilling and Paul Coulton. 2020. What’s it like to be Alexa? An exploration of Artificial Intelligence as a Material for Design. DRS2020: Synergy, 11–14. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.218

[18] Pedro Sanches, Noura Howell, Vasiliki Tsaknaki, Tom Jenkins, and Karey Helms. Diffraction-in-action: Designerly Explorations of Agential Realism Through Lived Data. CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3502029

[19] Vasiliki Tsaknaki, Pedro Sanches, Tom Jenkins, Noura Howell, Laurens Boer, and Afroditi Bitzouni. 2022. Fabulating Biodata Futures for Living and Knowing Together. DIS 2022 – Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference: Digital Wellbeing: 1878–1892. https://doi.org/10.1145/3532106.3533477