Home-based DIY Interactive Information Physicalization for Young Children and Their Parents

Home-based DIY Interactive Information Physicalization for Young Children and their Parents banner

Abstract: Public discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic surfaced the central role data serves in shaping personal and community action. However, people may struggle to understand messages communicated through data due to limited data literacy—the ability to constructively reason with data. Fostering data literacy has largely been the domain of formal educational systems and export-oriented tools. Informal educational approaches, such as games or family activities, may overcome barriers to engaging with data by fostering data literacy through casual engagement. The proposed work explores how informal learning through creation and play with interactive physical data representations (physicalizations) may foster increased action, literacy, and engagement with data. We will design a series of do-it-yourself (DIY) activities for young children to construct physicalizations from household materials. These activities will allow children to explore COVID-19 and environmental ecology data in the context of their communities, helping them reason about the pandemic and community-centered information through data sensemaking and the creative process of making.

Sponsor: National Science Foundation IIS 2040489

ACME Lab

 

Associated Researchers

Publications

Bae, S. Sandra and Vanukuru, Rishi and Yang, Ruhan and Gyory, Peter and Zhou, Ran and Do, Ellen Yi-Luen, 2023 "Cultivating Visualization Literacy for Children Through Curiosity and Play". In: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 29. (Jan 2023).

S. Sandra Bae. 2022. "Towards a Deeper Understanding of Data and Materiality". In: Creativity and Cognition (C&C '22). (Venice, Italy, June 20-23, 2022).

Peter Gyory. 2022. "Creating Platforms to Support Craft and Creativity in Game Controller Design". In: Creativity and Cognition (C&C '22). (Venice, Italy, June 20-23, 2022).

Peter Gyory, Perry Y Owens, Matthew Bethancourt, Amy Banic, Clement Zheng, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. 2022. "Build Your Own Arcade Machine with Tinycade". In: 14th ACM conference on Creativity & Cognition. (Venice, Italy, June 20-23, 2022).

Bae, S., Zheng, C., West, M.E., Do, E.Y., Huron, S., & Szafir, D.A. (2022). "Making Data Tangible: A Cross-disciplinary Design Space for Data Physicalization".

Sandra Bae, Ruhan Yang, Peter Gyory, Julia Uhr, Danielle Albers Szafir, Ellen Yi-Luen Do. "Touching Information with DIY Paper Charts & AR Markers". In: IDC '21: Interaction Design and Children. (June 2021).