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

MCML Authors

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.

inproceedings KHR+24

TEI 2024

18th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction. Cork, Ireland, Feb 11-14, 2024.

Authors

R. van Koningsbruggen • L. Haliburton • B. Rossmy • C. George • E. Hornecker • B. Hengeveld

Links

DOI

Research Area

 C5 | Humane AI

BibTeXKey: KHR+24

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