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Physikit: Data Engagement Through Physical Ambient Visualizations in the Home Steven Houben 1, Connie Golsteijn 1, Sarah Gallacher 1, Rose Johnson 1, Saskia Bakker 2, Nicolai Marquardt 1, Licia Capra 1 and Yvonne Rogers 1 1 University College London, UCL Interaction Centre; ICRI Cities, Gower Street, London, UK 2 Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, the Netherlands {s.houben, c.golsteijn, s.gallacher, rose.johnson.11, n.marquardt, l.capra, y.rogers}@ucl.ac.uk, [email protected] An Figure 1. Physikit consists of four physical ambient visualizations (right), and a web-based configuration tool (center) to map the sensed data to the cubes to visualize sensor data, such as the SmartCitizen [ 10 ] sensor kit (left) . ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION Internet of things (IoT) devices and sensor kits have the po- We are in the midst of a data revolution where large amounts tential to democratize the access, use, and appropriation of of data are being collected about our behavior, bodies, social data. Despite the increased availability of low cost sensors, relations with others and environment. The increased availa- most of the produced data is ‘black box’ in nature: users of- bility of Internet Of Things (IoT) devices that are used for ten do not know how to access or interpret data. We propose community driven data collection offers the potential to al- a ‘human-data design’ approach in which end-users are given low local organizations, councils, and the public at large to tools to create, share, and use data through tangible and phys- discover more about themselves and their environments. ical visualizations. This paper introduces Physikit , a system Community driven sensor kits [10] provide rich information designed to allow users to explore and engage with environ- about the environment and include data such as noise, air mental data through physical ambient visualizations. We re- quality, temperature, or traffic. They have the potential to port on the design and implementation of Physikit , and pre- make users more aware about their lives, the cities they live sent a two-week field study which showed that participants in, and their relation with the environment. While these sen- got an increased sense of the meaning of data, embellished sor kits democratize urban sensing, data is often only availa- and appropriated the basic visualizations to make them blend ble through websites or public datasheets with little support into their homes, and used the visualizations as a probe for on how to use or interpret it. Furthermore, for non-expert us- community engagement and social behavior. ers, direct representations of urban data in classic visualiza- tions carry little meaning without proper context and framing Author Keywords Physical Visualization; Ambient Display; End-User Pro- [2, 3]. Users often do not know how and when to interpret, gramming; Human-Data design; Internet of Things (IoT) relate, and organize data. As a result, it is difficult for users to make sense of, and appropriate the data they are collecting. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2. Information Interfaces. User Interfaces – input de- To empower and provide users with better ways to interact vices and strategies, prototyping. with data, we propose a ‘ human-data design’ approach that bridges the gap between non-expert users and their data. Re- Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal search has shown that physical and tangible interfaces can or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice increase awareness and participation through their physical an d the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work properties and affordances [16, 19, 23]. Based on this work, owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is we argue that providing physical, tangible and reconfigura- permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, require s prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from ble “physicalizations” [23] that match people’s own needs [email protected]. and interests, will encourage them to discover and under- CHI'16, May 07 - 12, 2016, San Jose, CA, USA stand the meaning of the data they collect and decide for Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM 978-1-4503-3362-7/16/05…$15.00 themselves how to best use and share it. This approach does DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858059 not replace existing visualization techniques since physical forms and shapes cannot provide the same level of detail and precision. Rather, it aims at providing a hybrid expressive cubes to allow students to explore electronics through tangi- representation [16] of data by providing physical ambient ble interactions. More recently, Chung et al. [8] introduced cues, signals and alerts that present socially meaningful Cubement, a tool consisting of connected cubes used to cre- events in the data as changes in the physical environment. ate moving physical computing interfaces. Many of these These changes in the environment can provide enough detail systems adhere to the original vision of Ishii and Ulmer [19] to understand the data or entice the user to further explore that focused on interaction with tangibles through direct in- and act upon the data using traditional visualizations. put. However, the input bandwidth provided by tangibles alone is limited compared to traditional or sensor input. Alt- To this end, we developed Physikit as a toolkit and technol- hough their physicality helps in transforming data from the ogy probe [18] that makes users’ data visible and tangible digital into the physical world, tangibles alone often cannot through physical and embedded data visualizations called provide users with all the tools needed to effectively explore PhysiCubes (Figure 1, right). Physikit consists of (i) a num- and use diverse data streams. However, by building on the ber of PhysiCubes that each provide one unique physical vis- principles and ideas of reconfigurable tangibles in data rep- ualization such as movement, light, air or vibration, and (ii) resentation, we can revise physical tangible artifacts to pri- a web-based end-user configuration tool that allows users to marily function as output devices for data. quickly and easily connect data sources (Figure 1, left) to the PhysiCubes using a touch-enabled interface (Figure 1, cen- Ambient Displays ter). Users can explore, interpret and engage with different Parallel to TUIs, ambient information systems were intro- kinds of data by creating simple rules for a variety of physi- duced as systems that visualize abstract interpretations of cal ambient visualizations. A key research question this data in the environment or the user’s periphery of attention raises is: whether allowing users to program the mapping [6, 30]. Ambient systems “present information within a and relation between data and physical visualizations em- space through subtle changes in light, sound, and movement, powers them to explore, use and engage with data. which can be processed in the background of awareness ” [39][p. 1]. There has been a growing body of research that Below, we first present related work, and the design and con- explores the design space of ambient displays and artefacts ceptual background of Physikit . We proceed with a detailed [29]. Early ambient systems, such as ambientRoom [20], Au- description of the technical design of the software and hard- dio Aura [27] and “The Information Percolator” [15] focused ware. Next, we describe the results of a field study that ex- primarily on showing digital information through output mo- plores the use and appropriation of Physikit by five house- dalities that integrate into the environment. They leverage holds. We conclude this paper with reflections and discus- ambient light, auditory sound cues and output, such as water sion of the design and use of Physikit . fountains, to visualize and provide peripheral awareness on RELATED WORK peoples’ activities, information or social connections. A Physikit builds on four strands of related work: (i) tangible number of other ambient systems propose specialized arti- user interfaces (TUI), (ii) ambient information systems, (iii) facts that allow users to use the ambient system in their en- physical visualizations, and (iv) end-user programming. vironment. Cubble [25], for example, uses a cube that lights up, vibrates or heats up to allow people in a long-distance Tangible Interfaces relationship to communicate. Similar moveable artifacts are Since the early work by Ishii and Ulmer [19] Tangible User the moving post-it notes by Probst et al. [31] that can be Interfaces (TUIs) have been introduced in various domains, placed in the periphery and can be activated to draw people’s such as problem solving, programming, music, social com- attention when needed. Often, these ambient systems rely on munication and education [34]. Tangibles have been used as ephemeral interfaces [11] that have a strong temporal focus remote control units for media [7, 12], in which interaction and use tangible output that appeals to human senses, e.g., with the physical artifact is leveraged to control a remote in- sound, air, light, or water. These examples demonstrate how stallation. A second class of TUIs such as AutoHan [5], Cog- information can be visualized in the user’s periphery of at- nitive cubes [35] and AudioCubes [33] use tangible bits as tention using output mechanisms that appeal to human senses programming or control input to construct objects on a com- and blend into the everyday work or home environment. puter device. They use physical shape, form, and flexible Similar to TUIs, using physical space shapes awareness and connections between the cubes as buildings blocks to create allows users to move their attention into the periphery based a rudimentary vocabulary for designing new objects.

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