Section: New Results

Research Agenda for Data Physicalization

Participants : Yvonne Jansen, Pierre Dragicevic [correspondant] , Petra Isenberg, Jason Alexander, Abhijit Karnik, Johan Kildal, Sriram Subramanian, Kasper Hornbæk.

Figure 14. Three examples of data physicalizations.

Physical representations of data have existed for thousands of years. Yet it is now that advances in digital fabrication, actuated tangible interfaces, and shape-changing displays are spurring an emerging area of research that we call Data Physicalization. It aims to help people explore, understand, and communicate data using computer-supported physical data representations. We call these representations physicalizations, analogously to visualizations – their purely visual counterpart. We joined our efforts with research teams from Europe and published a research agenda where we go beyond the focused research questions addressed so far by delineating the research area, synthesizing its open challenges and laying out opportunities for future work. Examples can be seen in Figure 14 .

More on the Data Physicalization Wiki: dataphys.org/ .