Blind and low vision (BLV) people face challenges in accessing charts, often relying on assistive technologies with limited interactivity. This paper presents the design process of a tangible companion supporting data literacy for BLV people. Building on semi-structured interviews with five blind and six low vision participants and a review of current tools, we conducted a Story/Test/Story protocol with a low vision participant experienced in data representation. We compared a screen-magnified bar chart with two tactile probes: (1) a unit-based cardboard bar chart and (2) a static 3D bar sculpture, using a univariate public dataset. Insights from these activities informed the ideation of the Data Fidget, a prototype that communicates data through movement, expanding when values increase and contracting when they decrease, complementing existing assistive technologies. Future work will refine and test the Data Fidget with more BLV participants, contributing to an ecosystem of tactile and intuitive data engagement tools.

We propose Theory Instruments, a novel kind of tangible tool, to bring perspective shifts and new vocabulary into design projects and organisations. They aim to bridge disciplinary gaps among practitioners. In this pictorial, we present six Theory Instruments with instructions in cutouts, so practitioners can put them into action. To test the Theory Instruments, we conducted workshops with ten companies from various sectors. With the tangibles, practitioners investigated the interconnectedness of their products, the use contexts, and user experiences. They also unfolded internal interaction design practices. We contribute to Design Anthropology by mapping anthropological theories onto material structures that increase sensitivity to human practices.

Visual and physical representations of historical personal data have been discussed as artifacts that can lead to self-reflection through meaning-making. However, it is yet unclear how those two concepts relate to each other. We focus on meaningfulness, a part of meaning-making that relates to feelings. In this paper, we present three projects where mundane objects, our data agents, are combined in meaningful ways with personal data with the aim to trigger reflection by placing a person’s individual experience of data in relation to others’. To identify relationships between self-reflection and meaningfulness we use Fleck and Fitzpatrick’s framework to describe the levels of reflection that we found in our projects and Mekler and Hornbæk’s meaning framework to define the depth of reflection. We conclude with a discussion on four themes in which we outline how data agents informed the intersections between our central concepts. This paper, constitutes a first step towards unpacking those relationships and invites for further explorations by the HCI community.

Leading companies in the wearables market have introduced different virtual reward systems to their products and services to increase user engagement and enhance playfulness. While existing studies report mixed views on the effectiveness of virtual rewards offered by activity trackers, we still have a limited understanding of people's lived experiences with virtual reward systems. A four-month diary-based autoethnography reflecting on the use of three popular activity trackers (i.e.,Fitbit, Apple Watch, and Google Fit) and their associated virtual reward systems, plus an online survey with 113 current users of the same activity trackers were conducted. Results provide rich insights into how users interact with virtual rewards in real-life, and how these impact people's engagement in physical exercise. A set of considerations to design user-centric virtual reward systems that provide more meaningful experiences to activity-tracker users are derived.

While self-tracking data is typically captured real-time in a lived experience, the data is often stored in a manner detached from the context where it belongs. Research has shown that there is a potential to enhance people's lived experiences with data-objects (artifacts representing contextually relevant data), for individual and collective reflections through a physical portrayal of data. This paper expands that research by studying how to design contextually relevant data-objects based on people's needs. We conducted a participatory research project with five households using object theater as a core method to encourage participants to speculate upon combinations of meaningful objects and personal data archives. In this paper, we detail three aspects that seem relevant for designing data-objects: social sharing, contextual ambiguity and interaction with the body. We show how an experience-centric view on data-objects can contribute with the contextual, social and bodily interplay between people, data and objects.

Various mobile technologies proofed to enhance peoples collocated social interactions. In particular, user-generated presentations of self have proven beneficial, albeit in specific social settings. This field study interviewed 30 participants for their attitudes towards personal sharing in six public settings in a Nordic metropolitan area. We asked participants to draw what they want to share on an attachable paper sticker. We observed retention towards sharing in places with a more heterogeneous audience. Predominantly people’s attitudes towards sharing depended on an individual’s current context. Our results highlight the symbolic act of sharing in public as a factor for placing personal public displays. Further, we suggest leveraging the different strategies of extroverts and introverts for collocated social interactions.

Visual representations are being used in typical sales meetings of the machine industry to exchange information and support social interactions. In these meetings, sales representatives design for granularity by taking into account verbal and visual details of communication. Our article builds on increasingly occurring collocated interactions in sales meetings investigating the social relevance of mobile devices in face-to-face settings. The article aims to understand the supporting and disturbing role of visual granularity in sales meetings and develops design implications for interaction designers. We conducted an ethnographic study of sales meetings in material handling and paper machine industries, including Conversation Analysis (CA) of video recordings, and involving groups of professional analysts that are seldom used in HCI. Our findings draw evidence from sales meetings and design processes on successful and unsuccessful use of granularity in visual representations. Finally, we propose seven design guidelines for visual granularity striving to understand buyers' perceptions and visual qualities.

This PhD project explores a third wave of research on Mobile Collocated Interactions, which focuses on craft. Strongly inspired by the field of Data Physicalization it aims to explore how would people physically share (physiological) personal data in collocated activities. In achieving that it investigates potential relationships between personal data and meaningful personal objects for individuals. Future steps involve prototyping towards crafting collocated interactions with personal data.