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Outline

Title
Abstract
Into the Hidden Life of Data
Imaginaries and Data Representation in Hci
Method
What Materials Do You Associate with Data?
What Might Data Sound Like?
What Might Data Feel Like?
Waves of Data Rubber
What Might Data Smell Like?
How Might Data Move?
Personally Identifying Data. Your Sin, Name
What Secrets Do Data Have?
What Adventures Might Data Be a Part of ?
What Fiction Genre Do You Associate with Data?
What Friends Does Data Make?
What Characters Do You Associate with Data?
Shifting Data Imaginaries
Discussion
Conclusion
References

A Notebook of Data Imaginaries

Profile image of Gabrielle BenabdallahGabrielle Benabdallah

Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference

https://doi.org/10.1145/3563657.3596025
visibility

…

description

15 pages

link

1 file

Abstract

The processes of data collection and transformation are often opaque to users. This means they rely on their imagination to make sense of the data they produce. The images data conjure up, however, tend to be homogenous and flat: black screens, ones and zeros, big server farms in the desert. For designers and researchers who work with data as a material, this small repertoire can be stifling. For device users, it can lead to a removal of agency in how they make sense and engage with the data they produce. In this pictorial, we draw from a two-year data fictionalization project to start building an expanded repertoire of data imaginaries. We worked with seven households and seven writers to transform smart home data sets into fiction stories. Based on the interviews we conducted, we present the images participants shared with us as a step towards more expressive and varied imaginaries of data.

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