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.

Although physical artifacts that represent data have been used for centuries, the research field—known as data physicalization—has only recently gained traction. Compared to data visualization, there is no established vocabulary for analyzing and discussing the properties of physicalizations. Through a grounded analysis of examples and literature, we propose a comprehensive design vocabulary, which consist of three separate, but connected parts: explicit variables , implicit properties , and consequential aspects . Explicit variables build on visual variables known from visualization and extend it to account for physicalization’s multi-modal nature. Implicit properties concern elements which are central to the design intention and user experience of physicalizations, yet are not a result of “explicit” encoding strategies. Finally, consequential aspects refer to unintentional effects of design decisions, that influence how a physicalization is experienced. Our work illustrates how physicalizations incorporate opportunities and challenges that are not afforded in other data representations, such as embodiment and imagined touch . With this, we contribute to generating theory on physicalization. Our design vocabulary can support (1) creators through informing their design processes and highlighting design strategies, (2) educators, and (3) academics and practitioners to analyse existing physicalizations, and reflect on the impact of design decisions on interpretation and experience.

Materials play an influential role in determining the way people interact with and experience objects. This impact is particularly important to TUI designers, as the artefacts they design often afford grasping and physical manipulation. As the ACM Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction moves through its second decade, we sought to survey past proceedings to present a picture of the material choices for TUI design. In this paper we present an exhaustive survey of these proceedings and discuss insights revealed on TUI material trends. Our findings include highlighting the most popular materials choices, as well as the high percentage of materials that have only been used once throughout the years. Furthermore, we make recommendations on the future use of, and reporting on materials choice for TUI design and point toward future work that is needed to fully map the material landscape of TUIs.

In this paper we describe an exploratory study that incorporates the design, implementation and study of a system that utilises virtual reality, tangible interaction and force feedback. The approach we take is to design a VR system that incorporates a moveable tangible interface (wheelchair), which overlaps seamlessly with a 3d counterpart in the virtual world. The user interacts with the virtual environment by pushing the physical wheelchair, which simultaneously controls the virtual avatar. In the virtual world we place objects that once collided with trigger force feedback by stopping the physical wheelchair. In this paper we discuss the design rationale and technical implementation and follow by describing the next phase of this work in progress.

Research in sonification and physicalization have expanded data representation techniques to include senses beyond the visual. Yet, little is known of how people interpret and make sense of haptic and sonic compared to visual representations. We have conducted two phenomenologically oriented comparative studies (applying the Repertory Grid and the Micro-phenomenological interview technique) to gather in-depth accounts of people's interpretation and experience of different representational modalities that included auditory, haptic and visual variations. Our findings show a rich characterization of these different representational modalities: our visually oriented representations engage through their familiarity, accuracy and easy interpretation, while our representations that stimulated auditory and haptic interpretation were experienced as more ambiguous, yet stimulated an engaging interpretation of data that involved the whole body. We describe and discuss in detail participants' processes of making sense and generating meaning using the modalities' unique characteristics, individually and as a group. Our research informs future research in the area of multimodal data representations from both a design and methodological perspective.

In this pictorial, we present a method to facilitate hands-on physicalization processes during workshops. Data physicalization -- encoding data in physical artefacts -- allows for new ways to represent and communicate data and, as a process, can make the principles of data representation more "graspable". In order to (1) engage different research communities to discuss data physicalization from a social and technology point of view, (2) promote data-driven prototyping, and (3) teach physicalization as a creative process in educational settings we have run hands-on data physicalization workshops within Human Computer Interaction, Information visualization and Design communities. Based on these workshops, we identified three main pitfalls that can cause participants to get stuck in the data preparation, ideation and construction phases. To address these, we designed a workshop to facilitate a rapid engagement in physicalization activities. Testing this method as part of another physicalization workshop shows its potential for participant engagement, prototyping and design reflection.

Humans have represented data in many forms for thousands of years, yet the main sensory channel we use to perceive these representations today still remains exclusive to vision. Recent developments now offer us opportunities to perceive data through different levels and combinations of sensory modalities. In this article, we survey the state-of-the-art in data representation that requires more than one sensory channel to fully interpret and understand the data. Drawing on techniques and theories adapted from Thematic Analysis and Prototype Theory, we analysed 154 examples of multisensory data representations to establish a design space along three axes: use of modalities, representation intent and human–data relations. We frame the discussion around presenting how a selection of examples, chosen from the collection, fit into the design space. This not only informs our own research but can also draw the attention of the human–computer interaction and Design Research communities to aspects of data representation that have hitherto been either ill-defined or underexplored. We conclude by discussing key research challenges, which emerged from the exploration of the design space and point out future research topics.

Humans have represented data in many forms for thousands of years, yet the main sensory channel we use to perceive these representations today still remains largely exclusive to sight. Recent developments, such as advances in digital fabrication, microcontrollers, actuated tangibles, and shape-changing interfaces offer new opportunities to encode data in physical forms and have stimulated the emergence of 'Data Physicalization' as a research area.

Information visualization has become a popular tool to facilitate sense-making, discovery and communication in a large range of professional and casual contexts. However, evaluating visualizations is still a challenge. In particular, we lack techniques to help understand how visualizations are experienced by people. In this paper we discuss the potential of the Elicitation Interview technique to be applied in the context of visualization. The Elicitation Interview is a method for gathering detailed and precise accounts of human experience. We argue that it can be applied to help understand how people experience and interpret visualizations as part of exploration and data analysis processes. We describe the key characteristics of this interview technique and present a study we conducted to exemplify how it can be applied to evaluate data representations. Our study illustrates the types of insights this technique can bring to the fore, for example, evidence for deep interpretation of visual representations and the formation of interpretations and stories beyond the represented data. We discuss general visualization evaluation scenarios where the Elicitation Interview technique may be beneficial and specify what needs to be considered when applying this technique in a visualization context specifically.

This paper presents an overview of the research that I have conducted as part of my PhD studies. The objective of this research is to describe and better understand how embodiment influences and augments an audience's experience of data representations. It explores, through creative practice, whether embodying data in alternative modalities contributes to an audience's capacity to construct meaning and empathize with the data source.

In this paper we present TaraScope, a multimodal installation that enables student groups, participating in workshops at a Space Observatory in Ireland, to remotely manipulate and capture images from a robotic telescope situated in San Francisco, California. This project is developed as part of an international initiative between Blackrock Castle Observatory (BCO), Ireland and Chabot Space & Science Center, California, with the aim of connecting the two locations while also stimulating interest in astronomy, science, technology, engineering and math. We describe the design rationale and implementation of the installation, which is based on creating an inviting, apprehendable, inexpensive and engaging system that supports inquiry-led learning and group interactions. Furthermore, we present several initial observations on the user experience of the system that we gathered through a series of evaluations that we conducted at the Observatory.

This paper introduces two devices; H3 ('Hydrogen cubed') and a Solar Radiation Dowsing Rod, both crossmodal data-driven artefacts that represent live data streams using haptic-auditory feedback. The motivation for creating these artefacts was to offer casual users the opportunity to interact with data that would normally only be explored by experts, with the aim of stimulating curiosity, intrigue and awareness. In addition to the description of the devices, we discuss the concept behind their design and initial observations from a user study.