We present an approach to more sustainable organising and facilitating of data physicalization workshops, via the creation of the ZeroWaste PhysKit — a data physicalization kit that can be used across multiple workshops without either loss of materials or the production of waste. We outline the practices we employed in the creation of the kit, which constitute a novel approach to sustainable physicalization, as well as reflections based on three case studies, to prompt discussion and facilitate replication and iteration by other practitioners and researchers.

Against the backdrop of a growing concern with environmental sustainability across HCI research and design, TEI'24 was the first version of the conference to include a sustainability chair. In conjunction with this increasing interest in sustainability, we organised a Studio at TEI'24 to engage the community in a conversation about the sustainability of conferences by using data physicalizations to mediate this discussion. In a one-day Studio, the organisers and attendees constructed two large-scale input physicalizations that were deployed at the conference venue to collect data around conference sustainability from TEI attendees. In this pictorial, we present the outcomes of this Studio, including the two input physicalizations and the collected data. We offer a description of the strategies we employed to design in a more sustainable way, as well as reflections on input physicalizations and the opportunities and challenges they present for facilitating data-driven dialogue.

We examine input visualizations, visual representations that are designed to collect (and represent) new data rather than encode preexisting datasets. Information visualization is commonly used to reveal insights and stories within existing data. As a result, most contemporary visualization approaches assume existing datasets as the starting point for design, through which that data is mapped to visual encodings. Meanwhile, the implications of visualizations as inputs and as data sources have received little attention—despite the existence of visual and physical examples stretching back centuries. In this paper, we present a design space of 50 input visualizations analyzing their visual representation, data, artifact, context, and input. Based on this, we identify input modalities, purposes of input visualizations, and a set of design considerations. Finally, we discuss the relationship between input visualization and traditional visualization design and suggest opportunities for future research to better understand these visual representations and their potential.

Against the backdrop of a climate crisis, HCI researchers and designers are reflecting upon, reconsidering, and re-imagining the work that we do through the lens of sustainability. In this Studio, we propose to adopt this critical perspective to Sustainable HCI through an examination and reflection on the environmental impact of research conferences. Our Studio builds upon our prior work that explored sustainable methods and toolkits for facilitating data physicalization workshops. We apply the tools and strategies developed through this prior work within a Studio in which participants are facilitated to engage with, reflect upon, and create with data relating to the sustainability of HCI conferences such as Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI). Through the creation of data artefacts that can be displayed, worn, or shared throughout the conference beyond the Studio, we aim to spark wider conversations about the environmental sustainability of TEI2024, as well as HCI conferences more generally.

We explore the design and utility of situated manual self-tracking visualizations on dedicated displays that integrate data tracking into existing practices and physical environments. Situating self-tracking tools in relevant locations is a promising approach to enable reflection on and awareness of data without needing to rely on sensorized tracking or personal devices. In both a long-term autobiographical design process and a co-design study with six participants, we rapidly prototyped and deployed 30 situated self-tracking applications over a ten month period. Grounded in the experience of designing and living with these trackers, we contribute findings on logging and data entry, the use of situated displays, and the visual design and customization of trackers. Our results demonstrate the potential of customizable dedicated self-tracking visualizations that are situated in relevant physical spaces, and suggest future research opportunities and new potential applications for situated visualizations.

Situated visualization is an emerging concept within visualization, in which data is visualized in situ, where it is relevant to people. The concept has gained interest from multiple research communities, including visualization, human-computer interaction (HCI) and augmented reality. This has led to a range of explorations and applications of the concept, however, this early work has focused on the operational aspect of situatedness leading to inconsistent adoption of the concept and terminology. First, we contribute a literature survey in which we analyze 44 papers that explicitly use the term "situated visualization" to provide an overview of the research area, how it defines situated visualization, common application areas and technology used, as well as type of data and type of visualizations. Our survey shows that research on situated visualization has focused on technology-centric approaches that foreground a spatial understanding of situatedness. Secondly, we contribute five perspectives on situatedness (space, time, place, activity, and community) that together expand on the prevalent notion of situatedness in the corpus. We draw from six case studies and prior theoretical developments in HCI. Each perspective develops a generative way of looking at and working with situatedness in design and research. We outline future directions, including considering technology, material and aesthetics, leveraging the perspectives for design, and methods for stronger engagement with target audiences. We conclude with opportunities to consolidate situated visualization research.

We report on findings from seven design workshops that used ideation and sketching activities to prototype new situated visualizations - representations of data that are displayed in proximity to the physical referents (such as people, objects, and locations) to which the data is related. Designing situated visualizations requires a fine-grained understanding of the context in which the visualizations are placed, as well as an exploration of different options for placement and form factors, which existing methods for visualization design do not account for. Focusing on small displays as a target platform, we reflect on our experiences of using a diverse range of sketching activities, materials, and prompts. Based on these observations, we identify challenges and opportunities for sketching and ideating situated visualizations. We also outline the space of design activities for situated visualization and highlight promising methods for both designers and researchers.