Metaphors and `Tacit' Data: the Role of Metaphors in Data and Physical Data Representations

Rosa Van Koningsbruggen, Luke Haliburton, Beat Rossmy, Ceenu George, Eva Hornecker, Bart Hengeveld

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

    2 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This paper explores (1) the role of metaphors in physical data representations and (2) the concept of tacit data: implicitly known data which are hard to uncover. In a semester course with twenty-three students, five teams explored how to represent self-chosen tacit data in a visualisation, haptification, and dynamic physicalisation. Throughout these phases, our notion of tacit data evolved, resulting in a proposed working definition. Moreover, we noticed that metaphors played an increasingly important role. Based on analysis of students work and interviews with them, we found that tacit data and physical data representations need metaphors. For haptifications and physicalisations, metaphors help to circumvent limitations, curate data, and communicate to the audience. As tacit data were seen as soft and difficult to quantify, metaphors made the data workable. Furthermore, tacit data benefit from physical representations, which offer further dimensions to represent the feeling and intimate aspects of data.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationTEI '24
    Subtitle of host publicationProceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction
    PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
    Number of pages17
    ISBN (Electronic)979-8-4007-0402-4
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 11 Feb 2024
    Event18th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, TEI 2024 - Cork, Ireland
    Duration: 11 Feb 202414 Feb 2024

    Conference

    Conference18th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, TEI 2024
    Country/TerritoryIreland
    CityCork
    Period11/02/2414/02/24

    Keywords

    • data feminism
    • data physicalisation
    • notion of data
    • qualitative displays
    • tangibility

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