An Exploratory study into the public and situated visualisation of local data in urban communities

Abstract

While data visualisations are being used increasingly often in news reports, mobile applications and the like, visualisations designed specifically for public settings are still largely uninvestigated. My thesis is an exploratory study, looking into the role public and situated visualisations can play in revealing local data to urban communities - And how such visualisations can connect the members of these communities by provoking reflection and discussion. In this paper, two in- The-wild studies are briefly described, that both investigated the process of gathering and visualising local data publicly. Our initial findings show the importance of both the public gathering of data and public visualisation of this same data for engaging an urban community. These findings will ultimately be used to create a new theory of technology enhanced engagement at the community level, using public data gathering and public visualisations.