Revealing the Power Dynamics of Collaborative Sense-Making supported by Participatory Data Physicalization

Paper Title

Revealing the Power Dynamics of Collaborative Sense-Making Supported by Participatory Data Physicalization

Publication Info

• Topic area: Collaborative sense-making and participatory data physicalization in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).
• Keywords: Collaborative sense-making, participatory design, data physicalization, power dynamics, data feminism, visualization, embodied cognition, epistemic power, facilitation, stakeholder engagement.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: While individual data physicalization aids personal sense-making, it is unclear how collaborative sense-making unfolds when multiple participants construct physicalizations together. Power dynamics during these processes remain underexplored, potentially privileging dominant views and constraining equitable participation.
• Significance: Understanding and addressing power dynamics in collaborative physicalization can lead to more equitable and inclusive decision-making processes, particularly in contexts like policy-making, activism, and citizen science.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research has shown that physicalization supports individual reflection and narrative construction, but collaborative physicalization introduces complexities due to distributed decision-making and power imbalances. This study builds on data feminism principles to address these gaps and propose equitable design practices.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A participatory data physicalization construction process informed by data feminism principles, enabling stakeholders and participants to co-create shared meanings while addressing power dynamics.
• Novelty:
  1. Development of a physicalization construction process that operationalizes data-feminist principles for equitable meaning-making.
  2. A two-part model revealing three phases of collaborative sense-making (convey, negotiate, present) and the interplay of explicit and tacit power among participants, facilitators, and artifacts.
  3. Identification of how power manifests during collaborative physicalization and its implications for design.
  4. Design considerations for balancing power dynamics in participatory physicalization processes.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  1. Iterative co-design sessions with stakeholders to develop physicalization prototypes.
  2. Workshops where participants collaboratively constructed physicalizations using tokens, annotations, pins, and strings.
  3. Analysis of physical and non-physical actions during construction using constructivist grounded theory.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Collaborative sense-making unfolds in three phases: conveying ideas (annotation and token placement), negotiating meanings (clustering and discussion), and presenting group narratives (tracing paths and connecting clusters).
  • Explicit power manifests through physical actions (e.g., token placement) and facilitation, while tacit power operates via participant identities, artifact meanings, and design decisions.
  • Power dynamics influence who leads discussions, how artifacts are constructed, and whose perspectives dominate.
• Advantage over baselines: The proposed process explicitly addresses power imbalances, enabling more equitable participation compared to traditional collaborative visualization methods.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Four workshops with 55 participants across 14 groups, co-designed with 20 stakeholders.
  • Evaluation through participant observations, artifact analysis, and facilitator interviews.
  • Workshops applied in diverse contexts, including mobility research, human-machine interaction, information visualization, and citizen science.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Workshops were constrained by pre-defined instructions and facilitator authority, limiting participant agency.
  • Academic settings may not generalize to non-academic or more diverse contexts.
  • Future work should explore broader applications, refine facilitation strategies, and address intersectional aspects of participant identity.

Summary

This study introduces a participatory data physicalization process grounded in data feminism principles, designed to balance power dynamics in collaborative sense-making. Through iterative co-design and workshops, the process enables participants to collaboratively construct physical artifacts that represent shared meanings. The analysis reveals how explicit and tacit power manifests during physicalization, influencing participation and outcomes. The findings contribute a model of collaborative sense-making and design considerations for equitable physicalization practices. This work has implications for participatory policy-making, activism, and other contexts requiring inclusive decision-making.