Reconfiguration Strategies with Composite Data Physicalizations

Sauvé, Kim and Verweij, David and Alexander, Jason and Houben, Steven (2021) Reconfiguration Strategies with Composite Data Physicalizations. In: CHI 2021 - Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, JPN. ISBN 9781450380966

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Abstract

Composite data physicalizations allow for the physical reconfiguration of data points, creating new opportunities for interaction and engagement. However, there is a lack of understanding of people's strategies and behaviors when directly manipulating physical data objects. In this paper, we systematically characterize different reconfiguration strategies using six exemplar physicalizations. We asked 20 participants to reorganize these exemplars with two levels of restriction: changing a single data object versus changing multiple data objects. Our findings show that there were two main reconfiguration strategies used: changes in proximity and changes in atomic orientation. We further characterize these using concrete examples of participant actions in relation to the structure of the physicalizations. We contribute an overview of reconfiguration strategies, which informs the design of future manually reconfigurable and dynamic composite physicalizations.