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You say Potato, I say Po-Data: Physical Template Tools for Authoring Visualizations

Published: 17 March 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Providing data visualization authoring tools for the general public remains an ongoing challenge. Inspired by block-printing, we explore how visualization stamps as a physical visualization authoring tool could leverage both visual freedom and ease of repetition. We conducted a workshop with two groups---visualization experts and non-experts---where participants authored visualizations on paper using hand-carved stamps made from potatoes and sponges. The low-fidelity medium freed participants to test new stamp patterns and accept mistakes. From the created visualizations, we observed several unique traits and uses of block-printing tools for visualization authoring, including: modularity of patterns, annotation guides, creation of multiple patterns from one stamp, and various techniques to apply data onto paper. We discuss the issues around expressivity and effectiveness of block-printed stamps in visualization authoring, and identify implications for the design and assembly of primitives in potential visualization stamp kits, as well as applications for future use in non-digital environments.

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
TEI '19: Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction
March 2019
785 pages
ISBN:9781450361965
DOI:10.1145/3294109
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Publication History

Published: 17 March 2019

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Author Tags

  1. authoring visualizations
  2. block-printing
  3. information visualization
  4. physical template tools
  5. potato
  6. tangible tools

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  • Research-article

Funding Sources

  • Alberta Innovates - Technology Futures
  • Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
  • SMART Technologies Inc.

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TEI '19
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TEI '19 Paper Acceptance Rate 36 of 110 submissions, 33%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 393 of 1,367 submissions, 29%

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TEI '25

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  • (2024)P-Inti: Interactive Visual Representation of Programming Concepts for Learning and Instruction2024 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)10.1109/VL/HCC60511.2024.00030(199-210)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
  • (2023)Enhancing Color Scales for Active Data PhysicalizationsApplied Sciences10.3390/app1401016614:1(166)Online publication date: 24-Dec-2023
  • (2023)User-Driven Support for Visualization Prototyping in D3Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3581641.3584041(958-972)Online publication date: 27-Mar-2023
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