Designing data interaction in exhibitions contexts (original) (raw)

EMDialog: Bringing information visualization into the museum

… and Computer Graphics, …, 2008

Digital interactive information displays are becoming more common in public spaces such as museums, galleries, and libraries. However, the public nature of these locations requires special considerations concerning the design of information visualization in terms of visual representations and interaction techniques. We discuss the potential for, and challenges of, information visualization in the museum context based on our practical experience with EMDialog, an interactive information presentation that was part of the Emily Carr exhibition at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary. EMDialog visualizes the diverse and multi-faceted discourse about Emily Carr, a Canadian artist, with the goal to both inform and provoke discussion. It provides a visual environment that allows for exploration of the interplay between two integrated visualizations, one for information access along temporal, and the other along contextual dimensions. We describe the results of an observational study we conducted at the museum that revealed the different ways visitors approached and interacted with EMDialog, as well as how they perceived this form of information presentation in the museum context. Our results include the need to present information in a manner sufficiently attractive to draw attention and the importance of rewarding passive observation as well as both short and longer term information exploration.

Public Data Visualization: Dramatizing Architecture and Making Data Visible

In this paper we explore emerging modes of digitally-mediated participation in urban space that engage bodily and architectural relationships with data rich environments. We contend that the combination of data visualization, public space, and digital display technologies represent an important aesthetic and technical challenge that engages new dimensions of presence in a social and material environment characterized by networks and data.

Critical Journal - Information Visualisation made Physical: Communicating Data through Interactive Experience Design

“Information Visualisation” was originally conceived to help scientists and engineers to search and scrutinise patterns in vast amount of complex data. With the development of technology and other creative factors, this had led some researchers, artists, and designers to go beyond the pixels into uncharted territory of physicality. This critical journal is a personal study of my five-week studio project that explores and investigate the role of aesthetic experience in interpreting complex information, particularly data, into tangible outcomes. My critical journal begins with understanding historical and cognitive aspects of information visualisation and how physicality, with the help of materiality and experiential considerations, provides the audience a tangible connection between knowledge and experience in the real world. Subsequently, I will analyse academic writings of physical visualisation while using case studies of contemporary works to highlight valuable insight to facilitate with my studio project. These insights established three distinct stages to create physical visualisations; collecting data from a local site, designing data visualisations from collected datasets, and physicalising data visualisations with Saussure's theory as a conceptual framework. Works produced from this studio project not only prove its novelty, but also illustrates how contextually related experiences can motivate the creative process to evoke emotional understanding within users. Throughout this process, prominent subject matters were also highlighted to serve as a plausible project brief for my final year project.

Citizen Engagement through Tangible Data Representation Participación ciudadana interactiva y recíproca a través de la representación tangible de datos

2016

We begin with the premise that data literacy is a fundamental facet of citizen education in this information age, and that an engaged citizenry in a democracy not only requires access to data, but also the capacity to manipulate and examine the data from multiple perspectives. The visualization of data elucidates trends and patterns in the phenomena that the data represents, and opens accessibility to understanding complicated human and natural processes represented by data sets. Research indicates that interacting with a visualization amplifies cognition and analysis. A single visualization may show only one facet of the data. To examine the data from multiple perspectives, engaged citizens need to be able to construct their own visualizations from a data set. Many tools for data visualization have responded to this need, allowing non-data experts to manipulate and gain insights into their data, but most of these tools are restricted to the computer screen, keyboard, and mouse. Cog...

Transferring Control to the User–Interactivity as an Approach Towards Participatory Visualization Processes

benefits through interactivity have been assumed already. On this basis, the particular benefits of a set of interactions were tested in a participatory case study. Methodologically, qualitative as well quantitative approaches were combined for this reason. After each approach had been presented in previous presentations at the Anhalt landscape conference (SCHROTH et al. 2005, SCHROTH & SCHMID 2006), they were now combined in a cross-case study.

Ambient Data Visualisations in Public Spaces

Data visualisation systems have traditionally been found in the realm of analytically driven information graphics. They are often designed for use in expert contexts, which do not always lend themselves to a broad range of user populations. Scholars in the field of data visualization such as Michael Danziger have identified that in an increasingly digital society where data is readily accessible, design theory largely ignores the non-expert audience and general public. This paper examines how ambient data visualisations invoke engagement with the public using site-specific installations. This research examines alternative ways to present data visualisation to a wider audience, and in particular, how ambient displays of data visualisation in public spaces can engage a broader population. The benefits of this address the current imbalance of data visualisations privileging an expert audience. Two case studies examined in this paper: L.A Interchange and E-Tower. They are analysed through concepts of the philosophy of Slow Technology and ambiguity in design. The results of these case studies show evidence to support the design theories of Slow Technology and ambiguity in design as effective means of engaging the general public with data-driven ambient displays. This research reveals situations in which the theories of Slow Technology and ambiguity in design have been executed in public spaces as a way to actively engage the general public in reflecting on data. For designers and artists, this combinatorial approach highlights an effective means of thinking about the creation of ambient data visualisations in public spaces for communicating data driven ideas to the public.

mæve – An Interactive Tabletop Installation for Exploring Background Information in Exhibitions

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2009

This paper introduces the installation maeve: a novel approach to present background information in exhibitions in a highly interactive, tangible and sociable manner. Visitors can collect paper cards representing the exhibits and put them on an interactive surface to display associated concepts and relations to other works. As a result, users can explore both the unifying themes of the exhibition as well as individual characteristics of exhibits. On basis of metadata schemata developed in the MACE (Metadata for Architectural Contents in Europe) project, the system has been put to use the Architecture Biennale to display the entries to the Everyville student competition