In this pictorial, we introduce the conceptual framework of “plasmatic visualization,” an interactive form of data visualization that incorporates the image of the observer to provoke critical reflection on how data, bodies, and environments are mutually constituted. Drawing on the concept of plasmaticness from cel animation theory, we extend environmental data visualization beyond stable, objective representations toward affective, mutable experiences. We present “Plasmatic Mirror,” a design prototype using a real-time video camera co-located with an architectural-scale display to illustrate the principles of plasmatic visualization and engage participants in a reality-bending encounter with data on microplastics in the news. Through this work, we articulate three defining aesthetic qualities of plasmatic visualization—shifting from representational to visceral experience; from separate to entangled forms of visualization; and from exploring to attuning to environmental data—to support HCI designers in creating interactive data visualizations that prompt audiences to reflect on their relationship to environmental issues.

We share a speculative fabulation that imagines alternative relations to an increasingly polluted landscape, drawing from environmental illness narratives. The fabulation is brought to life through Ray-Flats, shoes that glow in proximity to toxic sites listed in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s publicly available database, and an accompanying navigational guide. The storied designs seek to make the extent of chemical pollution in our everyday landscapes perceptible while foregrounding environmental illness experiences as a resource for living in and navigating a toxic world. Bringing together crip and posthuman perspectives, we contribute: 1) an example of designing to stay with environmental precarity, 2) the concept of “felt space" for making diffuse and ongoing environmental problems affectively perceptible through embodied interaction design, and 3) critical reflections on using fabulations with material speculations to foreground marginal perspectives in design.

This pictorial presents a case study of "Into the Makerverse", a community workshop that engaged about 250 children and parents in combining AI and tangible making to express desired futures for our city. We thematically analyzed 43 exit interviews and 70 (intro) and 48 (outro) questionnaires to surface themes of craft as meaning-making, prioritizing craft over AI, recognizing AI limitations, and moving beyond technocentric futures. Our discussion reflects on tangible making for AI literacy, participatory design futuring for emphasizing human agency with AI, and the importance of collaborating with local communities for AI engagements that are driven by genuine local interest. We extend and amplify calls for AI engagements that work in service of community desires for local futures and argue for a tangible craft-based approach to support this.

If we want to understand the affective power of data in shaping our experiences of place, we need new forms of inquiry that reveal what data can do: not just for us, but to us.In this paper, we explore how engaging with data changes the way we feel about environmental concerns that we live with through an approach we call local data memoir.This approach brings together autobiographical making and writing with theorization through a phenomenological lens, specifically using the concept of orientation.We find that attending to our own orientation can be a useful means of tracking how our lived experiences are shaped by practices with data.Our contributions are two-fold: first, we demonstrate how the phenomenological concept of orientation can be used to interpret encounters with data; second, we introduce local data memoirs as a form of affective inquiry with data.

Drawing on queer and disability theories alongside tangible body mapping techniques, we explore alternative ways of mapping embodied experiences and expressing affective sensations. Our collaborative autoethnographic approach incorporates sensors to trace our somatic experiences over time, pairing visualizations of contextual biodata with personal reflections in written or spoken form. We unpack how these alternative approaches to body mapping support reflecting on, communicating, and deepening understanding of embodied experiences by foregrounding temporal and situated aspects. We offer expanded body mapping methods by sharing a plurality of experiences that embrace queer and crip ways of knowing, foregrounding alternate temporal and spatial representations.

Reflexivity, as conceived by feminist epistemologies, is essential to advancing social justice design practice. Reflexivity is thus critical for CSCW and HCI scholars and practitioners who seek to build equitable technological futures, as it allows for a critical examination of explicit and implicit values and politics in design and research processes. In this paper, we put forth a participatory walking method grounded in feminist ethos for cultivating reflexivity by engaging with the theme of boundaries in space. We outline this method through three integrated place-based strategies, including an activity in the home, a data walk in the city, and making and sharing visualizations for collaborative understandings of place. We argue that engaging with place is critical to foregrounding positionality and cultivating reflexivity in research. We share our findings from two workshops where we examined the efficacy of this method. We outline how the method deepens the understandings of the built environment, self, and others; welcomes vulnerability and fosters openness to change; scaffolds practices of critical self questioning. In doing so, it leads to a recognition of the entanglement of socio-political values in design and data creation, revealing uncertainties and ambiguities that can open up new areas for inquiry and design.

Through an autoethnographic account of designing, exhibiting, and maintaining an interactive bioart installation with plants, we trace intersections between more-than-human design, disability theory, and lived experiences of chronic illness. Specifically, we deconstruct three "polished" exhibits of our installation through stories of breakdowns and failures, organized in three main themes: maintenance and care, buggy biodata, and collective resistance to purification and control. Our reflections show how plants, technologies, and a chronically ill body became entangled with each other conceptually and materially, surfacing new sites for more-than-human relationalities. In our discussion, we unpack how disability perspectives can expand more-than-human design practices, highlight opportunities for re-imagining exhibition spaces, and offer adaptation as a strategy for design in HCI.

How can tangible, wearable design encourage affective, embodied reflections on queer history? We expand Queer HCI scholarship, using queer theory to inform the design of wearable experiences that explore archives of gender and sexuality. Our project, “Button Portraits,” invites individuals to listen to oral histories from prominent queer activists by pinning archival buttons to a wearable audio player, eliciting moving personal impressions. We observed 17 participants’ experiences with “Button Portraits,” and with semi-structured interviews, surfaced reflections on how our design evoked personal connections to history, queer self-identification, and relatability to archival materials. We offer the following design directions: (1) designing tangible archives of feeling; (2) queering tangible, wearable interactions in design; (3) designing for personal, archival experiences; and (4) designing within difference. Through this work, we foreground queer stories to affect emotional reflections on marginalized histories, entangling the complex connections between bodies, feelings, histories, and shared queer experiences.

Sensing Bodies is an interactive installation that integrates plants, biosensors, and data displays in a series of tangible embodied encounters to facilitate reflection on the complex sociopolitical entanglements of plants. The triptych installation incorporates different forms of biodata and three plantation plants of the U.S. South to highlight reciprocal people-plant relationships while fostering a deeper sensibility toward colonial histories of local landscapes. In this paper, we put forth three design provocations for engaging with postcolonial perspectives in more-than-human interactions: materializing tensions to trouble multi-species relationships, embracing ambiguities and multiple relationalities, and highlighting geographic and cultural situatedness. In doing so, we contribute to how TEI might facilitate postcolonial understandings and sensibilities.

How do we make sense of the promises of digital technologies for safe mobility? Drawing on a case analysis of Safetipin, a mobile app that has garnered much praise in India, this paper examines the assumptions and promises of technologies designed for safe mobility. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we draw on feminist criticisms of safety technologies, defined broadly, to identify the main issues in their framing and efficacy. Second, we build upon initial interviews with users and makers of Safetipin to examine how the app addresses, or fails to address, the criticisms received by other safety technologies. We conclude by foregrounding key questions that ICTD designers can consider when designing for safe mobility in India and beyond.

When chronic illness, such as Lyme disease, is viewed through a disability lens, equitable access to public spaces becomes an important area for consideration. Yet chronic illness is often viewed solely through an individualistic, medical model lens. We contribute to this field of study in four consecutive steps using Lyme disease as a case study: (1) we highlight urban design and planning literature to make the case for its relevance to chronic illness; (2) we explore the place-related impacts of living with chronic illness through an analysis of interviews with fourteen individuals living with Lyme disease; (3) we derive a set of design guidelines from our literature review and interviews that serve to support populations living with chronic illness; and (4) we present an interactive mapping prototype that applies our design guidelines to support individuals living with chronic illness in experiencing and navigating public and outdoor spaces.