Office sensor systems often fail to present environmental data related to office well-being in ways that are accessible and comprehensible for non-expert users. To address this, we introduce Situated Data Sensemaking, a concept that enhances individuals’ ability to understand and use data by embedding it within their physical environment. Implemented through OfficeSense, a system that physicalizes environmental parameters—light levels, sound, air quality (CO2), and temperature—within office spaces, this concept was evaluated in a 4-week study (N=11) including a baseline week. OfficeSense influenced perceived data literacy and understanding of office well-being. Findings indicate that Situated Data Sensemaking supported participants in aligning their perceptions of environmental conditions with real-time data, influenced by spatial and temporal contexts, personal preferences, and collaborative interactions. This study demonstrates that embedding data in shared physical spaces can enhance users’ confidence in interpreting environmental data and foster collective awareness of workplace conditions.

Families often reflect on shared experiences, but few tools support this process through tangible, collaborative interaction. WePrism explores this space by introducing a constructive data physicalization toolkit designed for domestic self-tracking. Using modular tokens in various shapes, sizes, and colors, WePrism allows family members to represent and share aspects of their everyday lives through co-created sculptural forms. Emphasizing open-ended, screenless interaction, the system invites users to define their own symbolic mappings, encouraging creativity, interpretation, and ongoing dialogue. To evaluate its use, we conducted a five-day in-situ study with a family of three. Findings highlight the toolkit’s accessibility, ability to spark low-effort reflection, and potential to foster shared awareness. Participants appreciated its material presence but noted the need for clearer onboarding and more visible digital features. WePrism contributes to the growing field of tangible self-tracking by showing how physical artifacts can support inclusive, expressive, and reflective practices in home environments.

Modern workplaces increasingly rely on embedded sensors to monitor environmental conditions, yet these systems often operate opaquely—collecting data without user awareness, understanding, or agency. As a result, office workers lack the ability to interpret or act on data that impacts their well-being. To address this gap, we present SenseKit: a modular sensing system grounded in Human-Data Interaction principles of legibility, agency, and negotiability. SenseKit combines stationary modules that monitor environmental variables (air quality, light, noise) with wearable components that track personal well-being data (heart rate, activity, sleep). In a one-day field deployment, two office workers used SenseKit to explore their own environmental and physiological data in real time. The system supported situated reflection, encouraged environmental adjustments such as changing seats or opening windows, and prompted broader interest in how sensor feedback could guide healthier work routines. These findings illustrate how HDI-aligned, modular systems can support data-driven awareness and action.

Sensors in offices mainly measure environmental data, missing qualitative insights into office workers’ perceptions. This opens the opportunity for active individual participation in data collection. To promote reflection on office well-being while overcoming experience sampling challenges in terms of privacy, notification, and display overload, and in-the-moment data collection, we developed Click-IO. Click-IO is a tangible, privacy-sensitive, mobile experience sampling tool that collects contextual information. We evaluated Click-IO for 20-days. The system enabled real-time reflections for office workers, promoting self-awareness of their environment and well-being. Its non-digital design ensured privacy-sensitive feedback collection, while its mobility facilitated in-the-moment feedback. Based on our findings, we identify design recommendations for the development of mobile experience sampling tools. Moreover, the integration of contextual data with environmental sensor data presented a more comprehensive understanding of individuals’ experiences. This research contributes to the development of experience sampling tools and sensor integration for understanding office well-being.

Data is often inaccessible for non-expert users, leading to a lack of data transparency and speculation in the understanding and interpretation of data, not providing personal value to individuals. The SensorBricks toolkit was evaluated during 5 workshops (N = 20) to learn how an IoT toolkit can support the development of data literacy. The SensorBricks toolkit introduced data to individuals in a fun, accessible and easy way, creating a low boundary for users to interact with data, sensors and output modalities. The toolkit helped individuals to reflect on the role of data in their environment. The collaborative aspect gave individuals the option to discuss the data and learn from each other’s experiences helping users to create a meaningful interpretation and shared understanding of sensor data. The combined digital and data physicalization data representation gives individuals both awareness and in-detail information, creating an understandable and informative way of presenting data.

Increasingly individuals use devices, diaries, or applications to track aspects of their lives. Visualizing diverse sets of data and exploring their relationships poses challenges when data is fragmented across different devices or sources. Constructive Physicalization offers an alternative approach by creating visualizations using tangible tokens, allowing for greater expressive freedom and a new visual mapping process. To address this, we developed DataChest. DataChest functions as a constructive data physicalization toolkit for self-tracking, enabling users to visualize and make sense of their data. Comprising of 1057 3D-printed components, including trays, tokens, and a guidebook. DataChest can be used to explore how individuals engage with their self-tracking data and gain insights into the effectiveness of different visualization approaches. Additionally, we introduce users to the toolkit by showcasing various data types and visualization expertise levels, reflecting different levels of toolkit complexity. Our insights are relevant for the development of constructive data physicalization toolkits.

Office well-being aims to explore and support a healthy, balanced and active work style in office environments. Recent work on tangible user interfaces has started to explore the role of physical, tangible interfaces as active interventions to explore how to tackle problems such as inactive work and lifestyles, and increasingly sedentary behaviours. We identify a fragmented research landscape on tangible Office well-being interventions, missing the relationship between interventions, data, design strategies, and outcomes, and behaviour change techniques. Based on the analysis of 40 papers, we identify 7 classifications in tangible Office well-being interventions and analyse the intervention based on their role and foundation in behaviour change. Based on the analysis, we present design considerations for the development of future tangible Office well-being design interventions and present an overview of the current field and future research into tangible Office well-being interventions to design for a healthier and active office environment.

Data physicalizations embody a fascinating intersection of design, technology, and data, where physical artifacts encode information through their geometry or material properties (Jansen et al. 201...

Sensing technology is increasingly used to collect data about the workplace to provide insights into building performance and work activities. While such systems provide meaningful insights, they are a ’black box’ in nature considering people as passive data subjects with no input into the sensing and data collection process. We propose a human-data interaction approach where human workers can opt-in using an ego-centric sensor platform – SensorBadge – that provides tools to collect and inspect personal office data. We describe a field exploration of Sensorbadge to understand the wearability, usability, and usefulness of ego-centric data collection. Our results show that office sensing systems should fit seamlessly in the office routine of individuals, without asking for extra effort or creating conflicts with work patterns. Data should be classified and presented against a frame of reference for comparison and visualized to create understandable and actionable representations with personal control of their office environment.

Modern office environments foster sitting, a major public health risk, with physical inactivity being the fourth cause of death worldwide. This provocative pictorial presents the design explorations and bodily experimentations culminating in The Office Jungle, a critical and speculative redesign of the office environment that encourages physical activity by embracing wildness. The Office Jungle is a design exemplar of a “wild” office space presented as a suspended geodesic structure. It is built to experienc e how our office environment and our behaviour at work affect each other. We advocate that bringing wildness into office spaces will create more durable office environments that foster movement. With this pictorial, we aim to spark discussion amongst designers to think in new ways and to consider new opportunities to design for workplaces that integrate physical activity with work.