Data physicalization practices for exploiting personal data
In an increasingly data-driven world, the interplay between personal digital data and the physical tools used to represent data can have profound implications for how we perceive, understand and engage with the information that defines our lives. For the purpose to open up an investigation into the relationship between fab lab machines and personal digital data, we organised a one-week workshop to make students in the field of design and architecture engage with fab lab processes and explore how materials, gestures and tools actively shape not only the outcomes but also the processes of data interpretation and representation.
Ginevra Terenghi is a collaborator at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) and PhD student at Brunel University London. She is working on participatory approaches based on data physicalization to promote women's agency in healthcare.
Antonella Autuori is a teaching and research assistant at the SUPSI Institute of Design. Her research focuses on framing new methodologies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and design, with emphasis on the educational dimension and the analysis of bias in AI.
Matteo Subet is a teaching and research assistant at the SUPSI Institute of Design and the MA in Interaction Design. His research interests are human-computer interaction with a focus on new technologies and physical computing, and AI-driven systems in educational practices.
Sofia Petraglio is a research assistant at FabLab SUPSI and SUPSI Institute of Design, having recently graduated from the Interaction Design Master of Arts program. Her focus lies in digital fabrication, employing it for design purposes and experimenting with various digital fabrication processes to push creative boundaries.
The proposal originated from the interest of applying physicalization practices to expand the perception and understanding of digital personal data, combining the research interests of the four of us who organised the workshop. Based on the work of eleven participants, we identified five distinct approaches that highlight the potential of fabrication processes to expand traditional views on data understanding and representation, which are: the machine process as a sensory interpretation of data; the machine rhythm to reproduce recurrent behaviors in geospatial data; gestures on data-driven artefacts as interpretation of phenomena; material properties to reveal data; and the machine process contradicting material properties to embrace the duality of phenomena. Overall, we observe a dynamic, iterative relationship between the data’s nature and origin and the tools or materials used for representation, with each continuously influencing the other. This interplay not only deepens the meaning embedded in the artifact but also supports the idea that shifting from static to generative and iterative forms of making can foster a critical rethinking of data collection and interpretation practices. The results are further described in a paper that will be published in the Proceedings of EKSIG 2025. The Swiss Design Network (SDN) grant provided us with the opportunity to merge our interests and develop an activity at the intersection of diverse skills and competencies. This experience enriched our work and allowed us to experiment with our research methodologies and topics within a teaching environment.
We would like to thank the workshop participants Julie Agustoni, Andrea Benedetti, Leslie De Bortoli, Amina Fatou Cissé, Anna Freri, Ludovica Galleani d'Agliani, Maria Giner Dols, Ka Young Lee, Giulia Martin, Alice Mioni, Alessandro Plantera for their creative work and thoughtful Discussions, and also Serena Cangiano and SUPSI to provide access to the fab lab and machines.