Coding IxD (7) – Let's Get:PHYSICAL
From the Practice of Interdisciplinary Education: Making Data Tangible
Teaser Coding IxD (7), Let’s Get: Physical, 2023.
Data is immaterial in nature, and we often interact with it through a flat screen. Using a research-through-design approach, in the Coding IxD (Computer Science x Design) course, we explore how to physically encode data and how the resulting physical forms, consisting of shape and behavior, support human cognition, communication, and learning. We challenged our students with this year's theme, »Let's get: PHYSICAL«, and focused on the materialization of routines using personal data.
Personal data increasingly permeates our daily routines, tracking our sleep, steps, or energy consumption. However, data is often only digitally accessible through a smartphone app. To make students aware of this situation, we encouraged them to record, analyze, visualize their routines and derive a specific context for design.
Based on these explorations, we challenged them to explore how data can be part of our material world, how the properties of the material allow for a specific design, and at the same time, how the material affects people's perception. Such a physicalization of data represents what we understand as »neo-analog«, a synthesis of digital (data) and material (thing) in form and function.
In the winter semester 2022/23, »Coding IxD« entered its seventh round as part of the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity«. The course is a cooperation between the Human-Centered Computing Research Group led by Claudia Müller-Birn (Freie Universität Berlin) and the Embodied Interaction Group led by Carola Zwick, Judith Glaser, and Thomas Ness (weissensee school of art and design berlin). In interdisciplinary teams, we are researching and discussing the possibilities of data physicalization to take informed action based on personal data.
The results of our explorations can be experienced during our exhibition at the CityLAB Berlin from February 16th–23rd, 2023.
On February 15th, from 6-9 pm, you are kindly invited to the opening night, to get an exclusive glimpse of the project results and get in touch with the students.
Supervision:
Prof. Dr. Claudia Müller-Birn (Freie Universität Berlin)
Peter Sörries (Freie Universität Berlin)
Prof. Judith Glaser (weißensee school of art and design berlin)
