We present the Inner Ear: a porcelain device that both captures and represents data. In particular, we focus on sensing vibrations—for their hidden yet omnipresent qualities in domestic environments. We designed the Inner Ear in response and in contrast to a growing collection of ‘always on and recording’ smart home devices. With the Inner Ear, we purposefully let participants choose when to capture vibrations and which capture should be physicalized. In this pictorial, we describe the design and fabrication process of the capturing device as well as the data physicalization workflow. We contribute insights on (1) the design rationale and development of a double function artifact (to both capture and represent), as well as (2) design decisions involved in balancing legibility with leaving room for meaning making during the transcription of home vibration data.

This paper describes the Making Core Memory project, a design inquiry into the invisible work that went into assem-bling core memory, an early form of computer information storage initially woven by hand. Drawing on feminist tradi-tions of situated knowing, we designed an electronic quilt and a series of participatory workshops that materialize the work of the core memory weavers. With this case we not only broaden dominant stories of design, but we also reflect on the entanglement of predominantly male, high status labor with the ostensibly low-status work of women's hands. By integrating design and archival research as a means of cultural analysis, we further expand conversations on design research methods within human-computer inter-action (HCI), using design to reveal legacies of practice elided by contemporary technology cultures. In doing so, this paper highlights for HCI scholars that worlds of hand-work and computing, or weaving and space travel, are not as separate as we might imagine them to be.