Participatory Data Physicalization:

A New Space to Inform

Matteo Moretti(&) and Alvise Mattozzi(&)

Faculty of Design and Art, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano,

Piazzetta dell’Università, 1, 39100 Bolzano, Italy
{matmoretti,Alvise.Mattozzi}@unibz.it

Abstract. The paper proposes a reflection on how to analyze, assess and design
Participatory Data Physicalization (PDP) by taking into consideration a PDP
project designed by one of the authors of the paper. For Data Physicalization we
intend the translation of data into tangible and, in any case, perceptible-with-
senses-other-than-vision artifacts. Data Physicalization allows for an engage-
ment of the recipient of information which differ from that of Data Visualization.
By exploiting and exploring these different forms of engagement, which often
entail the involvement of the entire body, Data Physicalization can give way to
artifacts that dispose and afford participation. PDP can be then a way to promote
participation and to democratize data beyond a broader diffusion and deeper
understanding of information. The paper discusses all these issues by taking into
account a PDP project about cancer awareness.

Keywords: Awareness ! Data Physicalization ! Data Visualization !

Participation ! Healthcare

1 Introduction

The story of data visualization has been witnessed some important changes, and
probably that driven by Neurath represents the most important: he turned an analytical
practice into an informative one, opening it up to a new public, from a one that was
selected and highly specialized to a one that was broader and often uneducated
(Hartmann 2017). Moved by a social aim, Neurath defined a new wave of data visu-
alization, broadening its form and purposes (Hartmann 2017). Several changes took
place then, such as the functional innovation introduced by Tufte (Cairo 2013) or the
storytelling approach invented by Holmes (Cairo 2013).
In the last five years, the data visualization community has been witnessed the
emerging of the data physicalization phenomenon: “a physical artifact whose geometry
or material properties encode data” (Jansen et al. 2015, p. 1). Data physicalization may
represents an important evolutionary step in data visualization history.

The present paper is a totally collaborative effort from the two authors. If, however, for academic
reasons individual responsibility is to be assigned, Matteo Moretti has written § 1; § 2; § 4.1; § 4.2; §
3.2; § 5; Alvise Mattozzi § 3; § 4.3; § 6; § 7.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

E. Cicalò (Ed.): IMG 2019, AISC 1140, pp. 1061–1080, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41018-6_86
1062 M. Moretti and A. Mattozzi

Data become analog, and so are visible and tangible in the public space, opening new
design possibilities for new audiences, which are no longer online but in public spaces
such as museums, city squares or neighborhoods. Information is then spread through
objects in the space: data physicalization is blurring the boundaries between product,
information and exhibit design. Moreover, new forms of interaction are taking place, in
the moment that data physicalization becomes participatory: visitors turn into partici-
pants, contributing actively to the visualization with their data, giving rise to a recursive
action in which participants are both the protagonists and the audience of the visualization.
Excellent projects such as the work of the Catalan group Domestic Data Streamers,
the Sagmeister’s Happiness data physicalization, or Swiss pavilion at the 2015 World
Expo in Milan, are showing new possibilities to both engage and inform a local public.
Participatory Data Physicalization (PDP) is currently an intriguing and playful
practice that has an incredible potential in informing and engaging a local public on
specific issues, but this approach has never been studied and evaluated from a scientific
point of view. While a little attention has been given to the Data Physicalization
practice by Jansen et al. (2015), the benefits, and the limits of a Participatory approach
has never been investigated.
In this study, we describe a PDP case study that the papers’ authors designed: it
took place in November 2017 in Milan during the TedMed, a general public event
about health care issues. The participatory experience involved the TedMed public and
exposed it to the cancer prevention issue, a delicate topic that is generally difficult to
communicate and to be listened to. Affected and engaged by a good design, the
TedMed attendants participated in the data physicalization and then took part in the
qualitative evaluation, where they released important feedback on the experience and
their knowledge of the topic. The collected data revealed that the physical interaction
supported the participants in focusing on the topic and reflecting on it.
This paper is structured as follows: Sect. 1 describes the data visualization his-
torical context and its early physical variation, followed then by a semiotic Reflection
on the role the images have in data visualization in Sect. 2. Two contemporary case
studies are then presented and compared in Sect. 3, which describe the participatory
approach and also reveals the lack of scientifically driven methods and reflections in
PDP practice. Section 4 presents then a case study designed by the paper’s author that
explore and evaluate the effectiveness of the PDP, while finally, Sect. 5 attempts an
analysis and an assessment of the case presented in Sect. 4, through the categories
elaborated in Sect. 3. Section 6 concludes the paper, highlighting the effectiveness of
PDP to facilitate the information and reflection process of a local community.

2 State of the Art

The information visualization origin is rooted in the 1800, when statisticians such as
William Playfair in Great Britain or Charles Minard in France, experimented new ways
to visualize socio/political information in order to facilitate political decisions on
complex issues, often based on big amounts of data (Spence 2006). The main purpose
of their work was to enable the decision-making process of their governor through the
data analysis supported by the visualizations.
 Participatory Data Physicalization: A New Space to Inform 1063

One century after, the story of information visualization witnessed an important

revolution, operated by the Austrian philosopher, sociologist and economist Otto
Neurath, that introduced two big main changes in the practice. First, he turned the
practice from analytical to informative and educative purpose; then, he introduced the
interdisciplinary approach and the “transformer” role (Neurath and Kinross 2009).
Indeed, after WWI, Neurath sensed the potential of information visualization to
educate a wide range of poor and uneducated people who had survived to the war. It is
the beginning of ISOTYPE, a visual approach based on the idea of a universal language
able to visually inform a wide range of people, and no longer only Governors, on basic
historical, political and economic issues, in order to potentially upskill the knowledge
of an entire population.
Differently from the past, where the visualization was designed by the same pro-
fessionals who analyzed the data, his team was composed by economists, anthropol-
ogists, designers; Neurath conceived a new visual language based on the users’ limits
and capacities, driven by educational purposes. “The aim […] was to represent social
facts pictorially and to bring ‘dead statistics’ to life by making them visually attractive
and memorable” (Uyan Dur 2014). In this new context the key role is represented by
the “transformer” a figure able to adapt a certain content to a specific context. Only
thanks to the transformer role, an information can be driven and adapted to different
contexts and cultures. (Neurath and Kinross 2009).
The story of data visualization did not witness big shocks for another century, until
the statistician Edward Tufte made use of Minard’s and Playfair’s works and brought
them in the modern context (Tufte 1983). The work of Tufte is characterized by a
minimalist approach, where only the essential has to be communicated, in order to
focus readers’ attention to the core of the story told by the data. Contrary to his
ancestors, Tufte experimented new visualization methods in the newspaper context,
often in the economical field (he invented the sparklines, for instance).
His counterpart is Nigel Holmes, that has a background as illustrator and not as
statistician, indeed his approach is more fancy, flamboyant where information is often
hidden in the artwork. Compared to the past, the world of information visualization is
now populated by different approaches, often generated by different contexts and
purposes. If Tufte work is mainly devoted to disentangle the complexity behind the
data, condensing more variables in an unique chart, the work of Holmes operates in the
opposite direction: his visual approach does not help the interpretation of data, but
instead works very well in attracting the reader’s attention, especially in newspapers,
where the information has to compete with advertising and pictures in order to grasp
the reader’s focus (Cairo 2013).
In the last years, we could find a new evolution in the data visualization, that
brought it into the experiential domain. Even if the purpose is often informative, the
methods that are used are completely different bringing it to the public space, intro-
ducing the third physical dimension and the materiality, as well as the physical
interaction with the public. Likewise, Neurath that replaced the abstract rectangles or
circles of a chart with evocative pictograms able to suggest or introduce the topic, in
this new dimension real objects, with all the effects that they produce, are the new
protagonist of what we could call Data Physicalization (DP).
1064 M. Moretti and A. Mattozzi

We cannot consider the data visualization apart from the main design context that has
also changed in this last decades. As clearly stated by Manzini (2015) design is moving
towards new horizons or better, we cannot frame design without its social impact and
purpose, exactly as sensed by Tufte. The participatory or co-design practices are some of
the new directions that social design has taken and that, in a way, are strongly influencing
the whole design field, and consequently the information design, too.
In this new framework, some relevant works introduced new ways to experience
the data, that does not stand only to the informative approach but involve new
dimension such as the participation in the visualization transforming the “reader” in
“visitor” or better, “active visitor” and even the main actors of the data visualization as
we will discover below.

3 Observing, Comparing, Describing: Analysis

and Assessment of Data Visualization

The aim of this paper is (also) to propose a way to analyze and assess the efficacy of
data visualizations - and especially those that we have called Participatory Data
Physicalization (PDP) - by developing an interdisciplinary reflection on these issue that
can lead, in the near future, to a model and a procedure, which can also be a ground for
collaboration and mutual learning among different fields of knowledge and poiesis.
Therefore, besides the reflection proposed by designers and practitioners them-
selves, mentioned in the previous paragraph, we will consider how data visualization
has been, since at least the 1960s of the last century, an object of research for semiotics
as well as for the social studies of science. These two fields of research have in most
cases proceeded in parallel with few actual encounters and crossings (see Bastide 1990,
2001; Latour 2011).
On one hand semiotics, semiotics of images, semiotics of graphics (Bertin 1967),
and semiotics of scientific images (Dondero and Fontanille 2012) have, through the
study of many empirical cases (Chatenet and Mattozzi 2013; Manchia 2015) and
addressing many specific issues (such as, i.g., rhetorics), described the main features of
the language of data visualization as well as many of its instantiations. On the other
hand, the social studies of scientific images (for an overview Coopmans et al. 2014;
Lynch and Woolgar 1990; Perrotta 2012) have studied the production and use of
images within scientific practices (among others, Goodwin 1994, 2003; Latour 1987,
1999), paying attention at how the transformations of these images taking place all
along scientific processes produce and increase of knowledge (Latour 1990, 1999).
Since, the paper and the research behind it will have to deal with visualizations
deployed in 3D space and through analog artifacts and with the interaction with these
artifacts, also the reflection of the semiotics of objects (for an overview, Mangano
2009) will be of relevance in order to provide tools to describe and, from there,
understand how to design, data visualization analog artifacts. Concepts as script
(Akrich 1992; Akrich and Latour 1992; Latour 1992), which, based on semiotics, have
being used within the field of the social study of sciences and technologies, and which
have been recently recovered and re-elaborated (Mattozzi 2010; 2017; Cabitza and
 Participatory Data Physicalization: A New Space to Inform 1065

Mattozzi 2017) can be useful tools to reflect on and design in an integrated way analog
visualization artifacts.
This analysis will be compared with the recent reflection on analog visualization
emerged within the fields of design, cognitive sciences and human computer interaction
(Bennet et al. 2012; Bernhaupt et al. 2014; Cuendet et al. 2012; Group 2006; Jansen et al.
2015; Judelman 2004; Moere 2008; Moere and Patel 2009; Rezaeian and Donovan 2014;
Stusak and Aslan 2014; Stusak et al. 2016, 2015; Studak et al. 2014; Trevor Hogan 2012;
Zhao and Moere 2008).
Recently, the reflection on the relevance of images in scientific practices and, more
in general, in knowledge practices, tied with the relevance of scientific practices for our
societies, has brought scholars to reflect also on the role of images and imageries, but
also, more in general, of material artifacts (Marres 2012), for democracy and for
democratic processes (Latour and Weibel 2005). Eventually, the research behind this
paper will find a place within this broader context - both scientific and political,
intended in a broad sense.

4 Two Case Studies as Initial Ground for Reflection

4.1 Of All the People in All the World

An interesting case of data physicalization is the Of all the people in all the world
exhibition, where several data stories connected to the worldwide population have been
visualized through mountains of rice grains. Since the poster (Fig. 1), visitors are
invited to “find themselves” in a single rice grain: as soon as they enter the exhibition, a
single rice grain has given to them, creating the connection between the visitors and the
basic visualization unit, letting the user feel part of it.

Fig. 1. Exhibition poster that highlights the connection between the visitor and the rice grain
1066 M. Moretti and A. Mattozzi

Individual heaps of rice represent various statistics, such as “deaths in The Holo-
caust” or “the population of England”. Topical events are also covered, such as a heap
(Fig. 2) representing the people who lost jobs upon the bankruptcy of Lehman
Brothers, which happened during the September 2008 exhibition. Some of the heaps

Fig. 2. Exhibition data physicalizations overview

Fig. 3. Example of one of the exhibition data physicalizations

 Participatory Data Physicalization: A New Space to Inform 1067

are shaped to represent something associated with the statistic, such as the rice rep-
resenting the crowd at a football match being in the shape of a stadium, while the
players and the referee are represented as if disposed at the beginning of the match
(Fig. 3). Visitors, or people using the show’s website, are invited to suggest new
statistics for inclusion.

4.2 Lifeline and Mood Test: Two Data Physicalizations by Domestic Data
Streamers
The Catalan group Domestic Data Streamers (domesticstreamers.com) is one of the
most interesting studios designing Participatory Data Physicalizations (PDPs).
By positioning throughout the expanse of a museum hall balloons indicating data
about life expectancy previously collected through interviews, the installation called
Lifeline (Fig. 4) invites visitors to observe, explore, inhabit the space articulated by the
displayed data. The balloons correlate data about actual age of respondents and age at
which they would like to die. The project results in a wide space populated by a grid of
800 balloons. A volatile and ephemeral piece which questions our desire to live and an
irrefutable end of a journey, or in other words, a lifeline. An evocative and surreal
scenario that is possible only if people participate and populate the space with their data.

Fig. 4. Domestic Data Streamers Lifeline project

The installation called Mood Test explores another possibility of PDP by being
positioned in public space. It transforms a wall into a mirror that reflects the mood of
those who attend that place. A wall in a public square, initially blank, presents only a
timeline on which people passing-by are invited to interact with. Drawing a circle with
a colored chalk, participants are asked to represent their mood in that precise time.
Positioning the circle center on the timeline, setting a radius according to the age of the
1068 M. Moretti and A. Mattozzi

participant (or to other information as income) and selecting the color that fits better
their mood, the experience give rise, resulting in a vivid wall that turns into a mirror of
a specific urban neighborhood and moment. A collective data collection and visual-
ization in which participants turn into active actors of a participatory piece of data art
experience (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5. Domestic Data Streamers: Mood test installation

4.3 Case Studies Comparison

The three examples we presented above display certain similarities related to the use of
3D elements, and yet they unfold very different experiences. In order to describe these
differences, we will use few categories derived from the semiotics of images (Fontanille
1989) and the semiotics of objects (Akrich and Latour 1992; Latour 1992; Mattozzi
2010; 2017)
The project Of All the People in All the World (OAPAW) displays already gathered
data about world population by using a rice grain as unit. Quantities are displayed as
heaps of rice. Each heap is displayed on white sheet which works a frame for the heap
as well as label, thus framing to which the heap is related. As for these features, the
display is not so different from that of Museum pictures (paintings or else) or for
artifacts contained in display cabinets: a distance, or “disengagement” (Fontanille
1989; Greimas and Courtés 1979), is created between the viewer and what is viewer.
However, differently from many paintings and most display cabinets, here the heaps get
out from the frame creating a space - a 3D space - that can be explored by the eye of
viewer (and somehow also by the hand, though probably forbidden) and through which
 Participatory Data Physicalization: A New Space to Inform 1069

the tridimensional aspect can be fully appreciated. Quantities are indeed the result of
the relation between the height of the heap and of the area the heap occupies on the
white sheet. As we can see from Figs. 4 and 5, photographs tend to flatten one of the
two dimensions: or we see the height (Fig. 4) or we see the area (Fig. 5). Despite these
heaps are in 3D and not reducible to 2D, these heaps are not however sculptures.
Therefore, they are still more similar to paintings than cabinet displays than to
sculptures. Indeed, each heap or group of heaps provide a specific position for the
viewer, which has to stay in front of them. Each heap creates, then, a sort of non-
accessible haptic space, which can be touched indirectly through the rice grain each
visitor receives at the entrance. The rice grain is, at the same time, a familiar element
whose figure is well known and an abstracted one, as toke representing a human being.
Through this tension between something very concrete, hold in the hand, and some-
thing quite abstract, the understanding of the various quantities and comparisons
among them is made easily understandable.
The Lifeline project also works by displaying data in a tridimensional space.
However, besides this analogy with the OAPAW exhibition, all the rest is different,
starting from the way data are gathered: interviews taken few hours before the inau-
guration of the exhibition from and about people who could visit the very exhibition.
Moreover, the space articulated by data is accessible. Thus, the viewer, not only can
stand in front of it - having in any case difficulties casting a total view of the visual-
ization -, but she can also access it and walk through the visualization, an aspect which
allows to mobilize the entire body of the viewer. Moreover, differently from each heap
of rice grains, the visualization does not presuppose one viewer, but many creating an
actual shared space. All this, together with the topic tackled, afford debate and public
discussion. Here the abstract aspect is mainly provided by the grid on which data are
displayed, whereas the object-figure chosen, the balloon, is familiar as the rice grain,
but is used in more evocative terms, in relation to balloons ephemerality and tension
toward the sky – and going into the sky is a known verbal metaphor for dying.
Though the third example, Mood Test (Fig. 5) results in a 2D visualization, which
can be considered quite traditional, the process through which such visualization is
produced mobilizes 3D elements, starting from the wall on which the visualization is
displayed. It stands on a square being not only visible since it contrasts with the flatness
of the square and hampers movements and senses which unfold horizontally (like
vision) but being at its center it becomes also the focus of attention of the passersby.
Domestic Data Streamers of course use such characteristic of the wall, in order to get in
contact with people. Other relevant 3D elements are the spikes on the wall, on which
the strings are fixed, and which hold a colored chalk, all of which make a compass,
with which to gather data from passersby. And, this feature is very important, because
compared with the previous two projects, here 3D elements are used to unfold par-
ticipation as a way to collect data in the process of making the visualization and as a
way to discuss them, after the visualization is accomplished and comparisons among
are possible.
On the base of the various features we have singled out across the three projects, it
is possible elicit some of the variables used by DPs.
1070 M. Moretti and A. Mattozzi

First of all, we have to consider that a DP articulates (at least) three phases: data
collection, data display, data reception. These three phases can be kept separated
(OAPAW) or conflated (Mood Test).
Participation can then take place only in one of these three phases (Lifeline,
reception) or in all three of them (Mood Test).
Of course, participation can be framed and constrained in various ways: Mood Test,
which is the most participative DP, not only present to the participant an already
established correlation (age-mood or income-mood), but also, through the compass and
the chosen color code, constrains the movements and the choices of the participant.
Thus, as Latour (1992) noticed, devices dispose allowances, prescriptions, permissions
and proscriptions.
In all three phases, but especially in the last one – reception – the way a DP artifact
disposes the positioning of the recipient is very important and dispose, in turn, also the
degree of participation. Recipients can be positioned at a distance – disengaged
(Fontanille 1989; Greimas and Courtés), like it would happen with traditional visual-
izations, or somehow involved in the DP – engaged. Between the two there are many
degrees of dis/engagement and they are related if the engagement is disposed by
something that comes out from the frame in the DP is located – as for instance the
spikes on the wall of Mood Test – or it is disposed by the very frame that surrounds the
recipient, as it happens in Lifeline. Moreover, the various degrees of dis/engagement
depend also on the way the body and the sense are engaged (Fontanille 1989): the
entire body (Lifeline), just vision and an arm (Mood Test), an haptic vision (OAPAW).
Finally, another feature to consider is the tension between figurative/non-figurative
(abstract) elements used (Latour 1992) and their possible reference to other figures
(through metaphors, metonymies and other ways of establishing symbolic connec-
tions). By modulating these elements, the DP can result more familiar and more
accessible or less.
When designing a PDP all these variables must be taken into considerations,
knowing that more participation in the discussion about data does not necessarily
results from more engagement within the DP. Indeed, a distance is often needed in
order to produce a good critical reflection. Indeed, reflection needs comparison and a
comparison can only be carried out from a distance that allows to consider two or more
elements at once. In this sense, Lifeline that allows two positioning, one engaged within
the DP and one disengaged, in front of the DP is a good setting to dispose an engaged
but at the same time critical discussion.
If we consider all the above variables and possibilities provided by DPs, we can see
how they can be very interesting and fruitful for the depiction of a new scenario in the
data visualization field, transforming it in a:
• A tool for social interaction
• A tool for real-time analysis of a (small) community behavior
• New tool to inform and to tell story
We want also to underline that such field as far as we know, has never been studied
with the tools we are proposing. We will use them in order to analyze the PDP
described in the following paragraph, designed by one of the authors of the present
paper.
 Participatory Data Physicalization: A New Space to Inform 1071

It seems to us that the DP opens a new space (metaphorically, but also literally) for
design and for the dialogue between design and social sciences and for participatory
experiences aimed to collect data and inform local publics on topics usually difficult to
communicate as the cancer prevention is.

5 The More Awareness, Less Fear Case

“Between 30–50% of all cancer cases are preventable. Prevention offers the most cost-
effective long-term strategy for the control of cancer.” The previous sentence means
that a more aware society may give rise to a healthier society. More people are
informed more the chances to prevent the cancer in its early stages are, so to survive.
Currently in Italy, there is a lack of awareness on cancer’s diffusion, despite many
informative sites, printed and online campaigns about the best practices to prevent it,
the deadliest and less dangerous forms, and the necessary periodical exams and checks.
On an average level, cancer is still perceived as a deadly disease, and this affects the
information process. The information avoidance (Sweeny et al. 2010) is, indeed, a
common behavior, especially on cancer related issues (Emanuel et al. 2015): “empirical
studies revealed strong evidence that people tend to avoid information that would
confirm their negative situation” confirms a recent study (Golman and Loewenstein
2015).
The presented visualization project aims to inform a heterogeneous audience on the
quantitative data connected to the cancer in Italy and the related prevention best
practices. It relies on a Participatory Data Physicalization (PDP), which raises aware-
ness on the cancer prevention through a physical based, i.e. tangible and perceivable
through senses other than view, and a playful approach.

5.1 The Installation

The participatory experience was structured as follows: a 4 " 1 meters surface that
presented 12 questions (6 about participant’s behaviors, 6 about cancer numbers) that
participants had to answer tucking a wire in a series of ring. Each question has at least
two answers, that could be yes or no in the case of alcohol consumption (Do you
consume alcohol?) or up to six such as in the question How many new cancers are
diagnosed every day, offering multiple choices from 100 to >5000. All the question
referred to the Italian context.
The questions were divided in two groups, the first focused on the participant
profiling, asking for general information about his/her physical condition and habits:
• How old are you?
• Do you smoke?
• Do you drink alcohol?
• Are you overweight?
• Do you eat fruit and vegetables regularly?
• Do you have at least a 20 min fast walk daily?
1072 M. Moretti and A. Mattozzi

The second group instead asked participants to guess on cancer number:

• How many new cancers are diagnosed every day?
• How many people will be diagnosed with cancer during lifetime?
• Among cancer patients, how many are under 50?
• How many cancer patients survive more than 5 years after diagnosis?
• How many cancer survivors live in Italy today?
• How many cancer can be prevented with a proper lifestyle?
The first group of questions were simple to answer, in order to facilitate and engage
the participants allowing them to familiarize with the experience, while the second
group were more complex, asking participants numbers that most probably they did not
know, so pushing them to guess. The underlying idea of pushing participants to guess
has a double aim: the first is to discover how many are the people who knows data on
cancer, the second is to make them aware of their information gap, so to arouse their
curiosity on the answers and driving a possible change toward a more informed
audience. The act of guessing, in fact, facilitates the assimilation of contents by
arousing curiosity around the right answer, once participants are exposed to the fact
they don’t know about. As introduced by Golman and Loewenstein (1994, 2015)
curiosity occurs when somebody acknowledge that has a gap that could be filled by
information.
Once the experience was ended, the participants were also asked three simple
questions aimed to assess the effectiveness of the participatory approach to inform
differently on such sensible topic.
The questions were:
• Did you know these numbers before?
• Which of the six prevention best practices could you improve?
• Which of the six cancer related numbers impressed you so much?
Finally, an informative booklet that resumed all the important data and facts,
contains the right answers to the second group of questions was given to each par-
ticipant, in order to fill the information gap emerged during the experience.
The experience differs from traditional data physicalizations, for its participative
approach but also because it asks the participants to guess on numbers. These are
innovative practices that extend the potential driven by the physicalization of data,
transforming a physicalization into an experience aimed at raising awareness among a
community. Participants are then engaged with a playful approach that facilitates the
collection and the communication of data, which becomes commons, generated by the
community for the community, supporting self-reflections as individual member and as
a group of concerned users.

5.2 The Experience

The project took place, thanks to a funding of KnowAndBe.live, during a general-
audience conference on health care issues, the TedMed 2017 event, hosted by the
Politecnico of Milan, Italy, not more than 15 days before the submission of this paper.
Being hosted by a university made it possible to involve a wider range of people apart
 Participatory Data Physicalization: A New Space to Inform 1073

from those participating to the TedMed, such as students, professors, and generally a
less concerned about cancer crowd.

Fig. 6. Visualization of the participants sex and age group

The installation lasted one entire working day and involved a total of 147 partic-
ipants divided by four age groups and sex (Fig. 6). The majority was composed by the
young students that were passing in front of the installation, so a group of people that
wasn’t formally connected to the TedMed event and got affected by looking at other
people interacting with wires on a huge panel in a public space, this aroused their
curiosity and motivated spontaneous participation (Fig. 7).
The most common behavioral pattern was an initial curiosity and engagement in
taking part into the experience. Once people discovered the big installation, they
stopped in front of it for a while, observing the wires, reading the texts and the labels,
and looking at other people participating. When approached by the facilitators, and
received all the information connected to the installation, some of people were hesi-
tating, due to the weird topic, but after having read the initial question they decided to
take part. The first six questions, indeed, are easy and were answered in few second,
while the second group of questions, stops the participants. Since the six questions,
participants took a minute on an average to answer, what also the evaluation revealed is
that these questions were one of the most critical from their point of view. The whole
process took five minutes on average to get complete: participants were asking for the
right numbers connected to the cancer in Italy after having guessed them.
1074 M. Moretti and A. Mattozzi

5.3 What Data Revealed

Fig. 7. The final data physicalization result.

The majority of the participants were university students younger than 25, half of them
don’t smoke but drink alcohol, they are not overweight, eat regularly fruit and veg-
etables and take a daily 20 min fast walk (Fig. 8). Except the alcohol consumption, all
the other habits are compliant with the main cancer prevention best practices. Focusing
on the other participants age-groups, they don’t smoke but drink alcohol, too. Contrary
to the group of the students, they are more overweight (Fig. 9), which is the only
difference between the groups. For that reason, in the following steps, we consider the
participant as a whole.

Fig. 8. Answer released by the “smaller than 25” years old participants

Fig. 9. Answer released by the “greater than 25” years old participants
 Participatory Data Physicalization: A New Space to Inform 1075

On a general level, all the participants follow a healthy lifestyle, except for the
alcohol consumption: it seems consolidated that smoke represent a real danger, while
the alcohol one is underestimate.
The answer to the cancer numbers, instead, revealed how few participants knew
about the topic. Looking at the answer on the cancer statistics (Fig. 10), emerges a
pattern that looks chaotic and uniformly distributed among all the possible answers.
Moreover, only 2 question on 6 were answered correctly: the right answers are high-
lighted in green. What emerged is that participants think every day 5000 cancer are
diagnosed while the reality is 1000, apparently, they have a stronger negative per-
ception, compared to the reality. Even in the question about the age of cancer diag-
nosis, they thought the 30% of the people have more than 50 years, while it’s the 20%.
Finally, the participants thought that 3 millions of people with a cancer diagnosis are
living in Italy, while the real number is bigger, so they are underestimating the phe-
nomenon. The last question, moreover, about the number of the cancer that can be
avoided adopting the prevention best practices, received a positive answer: participants
thought that more than the 50% can be avoided with a healthy lifestyle, while the
reality is only 40%.
What emerges is a general fear of the cancer, but an underestimate of its propa-
gation and prevention, too: apparently participants are very trustworthy in the best
practices prevention that considers an effective way to fight it.

Fig. 10. All the participants answer con the Cancer numbers in Italy

After the experience, the participants were asked for a feedback on the experience,
and on their knowledge about the phenomenon, in order empirically evaluate the
effectiveness of the data physicalization project. The 60% of participants declared not
to know the cancer related numbers while the 30% knew only some of them; They also
declared that they could walk more, but only few of them would reduce or renounce to
alcohol. Finally, the participants were impressed by not knowing the number of daily
cancer diagnosis (question 7) and the number of people living in Italy with a cancer
diagnosis (question 11) (Table 1).
1076 M. Moretti and A. Mattozzi

Table 1. Feedback released by the participants after the experience

Question Percentage Votes
Did you know this numbers before? 60.3% - Some 44
30.1% - No 22
09.6% - Yes 7
Which of the six prevention best 30.0% - Walk more 21
practices could you improve? 18.6% - Eat more fruit & Veg 13
18.6% - Reduce/Quit Smoke 13
18.6% - Reduce/Quit Alcohol 13
14.3% - GetFit 10
Which of the six cancer related 07 - 26.4% 19
numbers impressed you so much? 11 - 25% 18
08 - 19.4% 14
10 - 18.1% 13
12 - 6.9% 5
09 - 4.2% 3

This small assessment allowed us to evaluate that the project exposed participants
to their lack of knowledge, impressing them with the fact they don’t know the most
important and fundamental data-facts. The consequence of this exposure was the
request for the right answer. What we observed is that each participant took a copy of
the booklet and read it right after the experience completion. Indeed, 150 copies were
given away.

6 First Steps Toward Analysis and Assessment of More

Awareness, Less Fear Case

Despite the More Awareness, Less Fear (MALF) PDP has been carried out less than
fifteen days ago (beginning of November 2017) and we are still working on its analysis,
we intend to outline here the way we are proceeding.
First the PDP is described (Akrich 1992), which means that PDP’s script (Akrich
1992; Akrich and Latour 1992; Latour 1992), i.e. what the PDP disposes and affords is
made explicit and described. Then actual activities taking place on and around the PDP
are described too and compared with the previous description (for a similar procedure
see also, Cabitza and Mattozzi 2017).

6.1 The MALF’s Script

As described before the main features of the long board are the questions and the
knobs, and these elements address directly the participant, leaving him/her in any case
outside of the frame of the main panel. However, somewhat within the frame of the
installation if we consider as part of it also the operators helping the participants – as
for now we are not considering them, and we are still analyzing the videorecorded
interactions between them. The installation requires a participation through the entire
 Participatory Data Physicalization: A New Space to Inform 1077

body, which moves along the board, an away from it to be able to look at it in its
entirety. There are no figurative elements, except those elicited by the verbal messages,
which are not metaphoric or evocative.
The main elements that address the recipient affording him an engagement are the
questions and the knobs around which to tie the string – again we still have to consider
the string in detail, since its use is strongly related to the operators.
These elements – questions and knobs – do not variegate relevantly along the board
from an expression point of view. However, semantically the questions differ radically,
passing from personal questions to “objective” data.
The board, in this way, does not display in a visible way the difference between the
two set of questions.

6.2 The MALF’s as Practiced

On overall we can say that the interaction between participants and the installation runs
as designed.
The most important element to notice, as we already did in Sect. 4, is the fact that
the difference between the questions causes a radical slowdown of the participant and
also an increased interaction with the operators. The participant passes from a state of
full knowledge to a state of doubt and this is marked in many ways all related to
requests for more insight or help, which will be fulfilled only at the end.

7 Conclusion

The paper describes a new emergent phenomenon called data physicalization in which
data became tangible and experienceable in the public space. In addition, it presents a
participatory extension of the practice, aimed to collect and return data to a local
community, and finally inform them. We described a case study of a PDP aimed to
raise awareness on the cancer prevention and at the same time to understand the
participant knowledge about the topic. In order to improve the effectiveness of the
communication and the awareness, we extended a data physicalization experience
through a participatory approach, in order to involve participants in the process, letting
feeling them part of the project, with their answers and, on the same time, arousing
curiosity exposing them to their information gap on the cancer topic.
The evaluation and the data collected revealed that people underestimate the cancer:
despite they know its dangerousness they think it can be avoided mainly following the
prevention best practices. Moreover, the evaluation confirmed that the project suc-
cessfully exposed participant to their information gap on cancer data, arousing curiosity
on the right information, that were then provided through an informative booklet
distributed after the completion. Compared to a digital form online survey where
usually a discrete percentage drop some questions or answer randomly, all the par-
ticipants completed and answered to all the questions, probably due to the physical and
participatory approach that engaged participants and let them feel “on the stage”, so
protagonists of a particular experience, pushing them to a serious and intense
participation.
1078 M. Moretti and A. Mattozzi

This paper represents a first step in the exploration and evaluation of the PDP
effectiveness. Future studies could be undertaken, in order to explore and evaluate the
influence of the external audience in the participants behavior, the power of physical
metaphor and design in the participants engagement, and the effectiveness of this kind
of projects in raising awareness on a local community.

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