CRII: CHS: Exploring IoT Data Transparency in the Home through Creative Data Representations

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

This project for engaging with artists and other citizens to generate new ideas for how network-connected devices can work in the home. These connected devices are called the Internet of Things (IoT). From baby monitors to door locks, the IoT connects computational and interactive artifacts to automate services like involving temperature, lighting, and security, to support everyday activities. This produces large amounts of data collected in the home. While home dwellers may benefit from IoT services, citizens need better transparency regarding: what data are collected, how and where they are stored, who they are shared with, and how they are analyzed and used, in conjunction with privacy concerns. This project holds promise for benefitting society by opening new avenues for empowering home dwellers to understand and engage with their data, contributing to making the IoT more open, responsible, ethical, and healthy. This has the potential to broadly impact data transparency and privacy, at a time when these concerns are paramount across human experiences of computing systems. By combining Arts and STEM disciplines, this work is also expected to generate interest in underrepresented communities, e.g., women and students in the Arts and Humanities. This research will use research through design as a method to develop new techniques for privacy and transparency by engaging people with their own IoT data, through creative representations. To go beyond current data visualization practices, the researchers will collaborate with artists to create representations translating domestic data logs into (a) 3D data materializations printed in ceramic, and (b) data narratives in the form of short stories. Printed ceramics will build on the fact that touching and manipulating data can be a generative sensemaking activity. Short stories will capitalize on the ways people understand complex and abstract concepts through data narratives. As home dwellers’ data are transformed into these new representations, the research team will study how they provoke new understandings and reflections around data in the home. Expected contributions involve generating novel creative data representations and design implications that contribute to transparency and privacy in people’s relationships with the forms and functions of IoT data in the home. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.