Session: Tensions in Social Media

CHI 2013: Changing Perspectives, Paris, France

Reveal-it!: The Impact of a Social Visualization Projection on Public Awareness and Discourse
Nina Valkanova1, Sergi Jorda1, Martin Tomitsch2, Andrew Vande Moere3 1 Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra firstname.lastname@upf.edu 2 Design Lab - Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning, The University of Sydney martin.tomitsch@sydney.edu.au 3 Research x Design - Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning, KU Leuven andrew.vandemoere@asro.kuleuven.be
ABSTRACT

Public displays and projections are becoming increasingly available in various informal urban settings. However, their potential impact on informing and engaging citizens on relevant issues has still been largely unexplored. In this paper, we show that visualizations displayed in public settings are able to increase social awareness and discourse by exposing underlying patterns in data that is submitted by citizens. We thus introduce the design and evaluation of Reveal-it!, a public, interactive projection that facilitates the comparison of the energy consumptions of individuals and communities. Our in-the-wild deployment in three distinct physical locations provided insights into: 1) how people responded to this form of display in different contexts; 2) how it influenced peoples perception and discussion of individual and communal data; and 3) the implications for a public visualization as a tool for increasing awareness and discourse. We conclude by discussing emerging participant behaviors, as well as some challenges involved in facilitating a socially motivated crowd-sourced visualization in the public context.
Author Keywords

opportunistic accessibility, such urban displays form promising communication platforms for citizens [9, 14, 23, 41]. While the majority of urban displays serve mainly civic, commercial, artistic or entertainment purposes, only few works present a civic goal: that of increasing the awareness and discourse on socially relevant topics [1, 38]. One topic of growing public concern is environmental sustainability. Several non-governmental organizations are actively trying to raise awareness on this issue by focusing on making relevant data available in the public media. However, although people are becoming increasingly conscious of the ongoing Climate Crisis, they are rarely aware of how their own activities contribute to greenhouse gas emissions [24, 36]. As a result, the interaction with energy-consuming appliances tends to occur without any conscious consideration of their environmental impact [33]. Recent initiatives address this problem by providing tools for precise quantitative measures of energy or monetary expenditures. Confined in a private context, these tools negate the potential of social comparison [15] and discussion, which might support people in making sense of, and reflecting on, their personal consumption habits. Furthermore, they tend to not gracefully integrate into the physical environment, and do not typically spark occupants curiosity [47]. We propose that these opportunities could be addressed by exploiting the unique characteristics of social visualization within the context of the urban environment. Social visualization, in its original definition, describes the enriching of social, electronic communication by making its rich and salient qualities visible in easily accessible and understandable ways [12]. Accordingly, social data exploration offers people the chance to increase their understanding of complex information by the power of collective and collaborative efforts [51]. Recent research in this field has indicated that people seem to become encouraged to create public visualizations for participative purposes, even spurring social activities alongside [11, 17]. While most social visualizations have focused on online environments, little is known on whether they can be successfully deployed in other contexts, such as public spaces. Accordingly, we hypothesize that awareness and discourse about citizen-related issues may benefit from the

public display; urban screen; urban visualization; energy consumption; sustainability; in-the-wild study; awareness, reflection; captology; persuasive computing; evaluation.
ACM Classification Keywords

H.5.2 Information Interfaces and Presentation: Miscellaneous

INTRODUCTION

Electronic displays are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our urban environment, ranging from community centers, museums to airports. As display technology is developing rapidly, it is likely that this trend will accelerate, so that people will become more accustomed to this type of situated media [19, 41]. With their visual presence and
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. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. CHI 2013, April 27May 2, 2013, Paris, France. Copyright 2013 ACM 978-1-4503-1899-0/13/04...$15.00

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Session: Tensions in Social Media externalization of contextualized data, for instance by means of social viewing and comparison. As a case study, we thus introduce Reveal-it!, a life-size, public visualization that consists of a dynamic infographic illustration to facilitate the comparison of individual and community energy consumption data. Reveal-it! is specifically designed as a tool for citizens to explore, reflect and debate on socially-relevant issues, such as energy consumption.
RELATED WORK

CHI 2013: Changing Perspectives, Paris, France community energy consumptions and allows for data comparison on both individual and public level.
DESIGN PROCESS

The general research objective of our work is to explore how the externalization of contextualized data can influence the reflection and discourse of onlookers. To better inform our design goals, we conducted several design activities including an ethnographic pre-study and a workshop.
Ethnographic Pre-study

A comprehensive taxonomy of the design space and requirements for interactive public displays exists [31], as well as several studies of their real-world deployment in a range of informal public or semi-public contexts: from museums [22] and galleries [46], to urban settings [14]. They have been designed to display information of relevance to a specific group of people [18], support opportunistic conversations [25], provide playful information experience [22, 46], or enrich casual interactions of people sharing an environment [29].
Ambient and Eco-Visualization

Like ambient display [39] and related approaches [34, 35, 48], Reveal-it! aims to raise the awareness of people by placing dynamic information in the immediate physical surroundings. While ambient displays communicate at-aglance information in the periphery of human attention, Reveal-it! shifts the idea of an aesthetic, public information display from the peripheral to the center of attention, also by using a more explicit way of representing the data. Based on the ecological issue of energy consumption, our concept relates to eco-visualization, originally defined as data-driven animations that display ecological information of any sort [24]. Some eco-visualizations aim to motivate the reduction of consumption by showing abstract yet realtime visual representations of appliance consumption [e.g. 7, 37]. Others constitute unusual interfaces to encourage playful and aesthetic engagement and exploration of energy [2], exploring the experiential and reflective potential of the systems [4]. Research in this field [e.g. 7, 26, 37] has focused mainly on optimizing the effectiveness of energy feedback in terms of measurable reduction of household consumption by supporting different stages of motivation [21]. In contrast, we use the concept of eco-visualization to promote public awareness and discussion outside of the domestic context and shared by many.
Urban Data Projections for Sustainability

We commenced our design process with a pre-study, which helped us better understand the relation between citizens and energy-related information from an individual and community perspective, leading to the design requirements for a shared visualization in public space. The pre-study consisted of seven focus group sessions, each with one to three adults with varying backgrounds and professions. In total we talked to 14 participants (six male and eight female) ranging from 22 to 57 years. Each group shared the same household, among which 4 were home-owners. The focus group sessions lasted from 30 to 55 minutes. The questions probed participants attitudes and knowledge about their own and public resource consumption. The discussions were based upon a short description of our concept and design examples in the form of sketches.
Pre-study Conclusions

The analysis of the focus group data helped us identify the types of information that seem to capture the interest of people, as well as opinions regarding publicizing this data. The focus group sessions indicated that the public comparison of individual consumption might spark opportunistic engagement and discussions. However, participants were not interested in the personal data of others in an isolated manner. Instead, they were interested in comparing values to averages, which could answer questions like Am I consuming more or less than others?. The discussions revealed how participants assumed there is a good average or a reasonable consumption (even in their local context only) that they found crucial and beneficial to compare on various scales: me vs. neighbors, me vs. neighborhood, neighborhood vs. neighborhood, or neighborhood vs. city. The discussions also revealed that people are only aware of the monetary value - what they actually pay - of their household energy consumption, compared to their consumption expressed as kWh, for instance. A majority of focus group participants argued about the fair positioning of personal data within its context. They often mentioned factors like household size, but also geographical aspects such as climate conditions or living in the same neighborhood or city. Eight out of 14 participants mentioned the importance of attractive or more visual representations of consumption data. The discussions suggested that people are interested in nonnumeric forms and in 80% of the cases participants found it even unnecessary to talk about data units.

Several urban displays have already brought debate on sustainability to the forefront by projecting related data into the public sphere. Some have augmented urban spaces with abstract, metaphorical representations of environmental data, such as future sea water levels [50], CO 2 measurements of the surroundings [5] or the energy consumption of a local nuclear plant [32]. Others have playfully allowed passers-by to form statements on climate change [16]. However, the impact of these visualizations has either not been studied, or little influence on public discussion has been shown, beyond the fascination with the interactive features of the installations [16]. Furthermore, unlike this prior work, Reveal-it! represents private and

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Design Workshop

CHI 2013: Changing Perspectives, Paris, France

We conducted an iterative refinement of design constraints and requirements during a collaborative 3-week workshop with data visualization experts [47]. This process was conducted in an extensive dialogue with paper and digital sketches, interactive prototypes and tests in-the-wild. Based on the design activities and previous work, we set out to build an urban visualization display that would a) provide awareness on individual and communal data but consider privacy; b) promote socially valid comparisons; c) encourage opportunistic and spontaneous conversations; d) be understandable and enjoyable; and e) be accessible and aesthetically-integrated in the physical environment.
THE URBAN VISUALIZATION DISPLAY REVEAL-IT!

Figure 1. The web-form for private data entry loaded in a table interface. Private Data Entry

To structure and maintain an overview of the design goals, we used the Design Space Explorer Framework for Media Faades [10]. This framework allows us to describe Revealit! with regards to the key aspects of any urban display system, such as its location and situation, material and form, dataset and data input and visualization design (mapping and animations).
Location and Situation

We developed a form of personal, yet public, form of data entry that allows any onlooker to voluntarily input their data into the system. We chose to use a mobile interface, to allow multiple participants to simultaneously interact with our system while still keeping some form of privacy. To this end, we created a web-form, which can be loaded on any tablet or smartphone (Fig. 1). This deliberate act of public data entry is also meant to enhance public engagement, as it provides an opportunistic moment at which participants must dedicate their attention to the topic at hand. The data entry form requested the participants monthly energy expense (what she remembers to have paid for her last electricity bill), her neighborhood and the number of co-inhabitants in her household. The participant could also provide her name, however this data entry was not made obligatory. Based on observations from our pre-study, we chose to include a monetary value range instead of electrical usage (kWh). Secondly, we made a list of value ranges available, since people generally do not remember the exact quantitative values. Aiming to address the consideration for fairness, the interface required the input of the number of co-inhabitants. Accordingly, the system normalized the reported electricity bill by the number of coinhabitants to derive an estimated consumption value per participating household member. While there are admittedly many additional (and difficult to capture) factors that contribute to the real average consumption within a multiperson home, we believe that this estimation proves sufficient to evaluate our research goal.
Visual Mapping

Considering the situational along with the spatial aspects in the design of public visualization is important, as situations determine the shared understanding and social interpretation of cues in the physical environment [20]. Based on the pre-study and previous work [25] we specifically aimed at creating a situation that supports spontaneous and opportunistic conversations. We thus chose to focus on public and semi-public settings that host informal, opportunistic social activities and encourage informal gathering, dwelling and transition, such as spaces in front of local cafs, inner yards or entrance halls of community centers.
Material and Form

Previous work on visualization in shared settings [37, 43, 45] emphasizes on the seamless aesthetic integration of the display in the physical environment. Therefore, we attempted to mimic the visual style of graffiti, by avoiding the visible rectangular frame of traditional data screens. Our visualization was implemented as a life-size (3x3m) projection, which is suitable to a wide range of physical spaces. This type of low-cost and portable display technology was preferred above alternatives such as LC displays or multi-touch interfaces, as these tend to be too fragile or expensive for a typical public setting.
Dataset

Previous work has used public, comparative feedback to reduce energy consumption by triggering feelings of competition, social comparison or social pressure [45]. Based on our pre-study, which indicated the potential benefits of comparing data averages on several levels, we chose to focus on a dataset that combines private electricity consumption data (i.e. from individual households) with more commonly relevant data, such as the neighborhood and city consumption averages.

The observations from our pre-study support previous results in literature, which suggest that visually distinct interfaces, visual aesthetics and animation have the potential to promote curiosity and initiate participation [22, 44, 46]. We chose a visualization technique that combines the seriousness of the topic with the more accessible style of popular infographics. The visualization consists of an abstract sunburst representation [40], of which each burst (Fig. 2.A) corresponds to the energy bill of an individual household participant. The circular visualization technique allows for scalability and hence an arbitrary number of people to be represented. Upon data entry, the participants name (if provided) appears in two distinct places: in the center of the sunburst graphic as a textual statement X spends Y !! and at the end of the corresponding burst, as a

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CHI 2013: Changing Perspectives, Paris, France

Figure 2. Reveal-it!: close-up (left) and two snapshots of the whole visualization interface with 22 (middle) and 56 (right) participants: (A) Burst of a single participant (pink) with her name; (B) Average neighborhood consumption arc (pink); (C) Circle of city-wide consumption statistics; (D)The center as a conversation window with changeable inviting messages.

comparative consumption number: Person X: Y !. Neighborhood X: Y !. . Each neighborhood is represented by a different color, and occupies different parts of the circular shape proportionally to the relative participation rate of the neighborhood.
Animations

Location Descriptions

The integration of dynamic visual cues can make visualization richer, vivid and more understandable [49]. Accordingly, our visualization shows a dynamically animated arc over each neighborhood portion in order to convey the average consumption of a given neighborhood (Fig. 2.B). The arc representation also allows onlookers to compare neighborhood values to city-wide statistics (Fig. 2.C). This visual feature focuses the attention to one's electricity consumption as a shared resource if an individual consumes more, the average increases and vice versa. In addition, the burst of each new participant visually appears with a smooth animation and bouncing effect, to highlight the recording of fresh data. A new entry is displayed in a white color to unambiguously distinct it from the rest of the graphical representation, which then smoothly takes over the color of its respective neighborhood. To offer an opportunistic conversational window between the visualization and the audience, we used the center of the sunburst to occasionally animate inviting messages such as Do you know how much you spend? or N neighborhoods are participating (Fig. 2.D).
IN-THE-WILD EVALUATION

Reveal-it! was first deployed at a public cultural center in the city center of Crdoba, Argentina (location A). The projection was installed for 16 days in a semi-open space within an open-air inner yard of the centers. To expand the diversity of possible overlapping situations [9], Reveal-it! was also installed in the entrance lobbies of two community centers (locations B and C) in two different neighborhoods of the city of Barcelona, Spain for one and three consecutive days respectively. The situations during deployments varied largely across locations: Reveal-it! was installed at location A during an annual festival about arts and technology, and at location B during a local round-table meeting about renewable energies. In contrast, location C hosted various parallel activities at the time of the deployment. In each of the study locations a mobile iPad interface was situated in front of the visualization to facilitate participation. Visitors could dwell around in the spaces, discover and spontaneously approach the visualization. A sign, placed on the wall next to the projection, informed visitors about the study being conducted. Through a contextual inquiry, we identified three distinct types of situational contexts: daily-basis activities (e.g. senior social club, daily care for children), weekly activities (e.g. workshops, dance classes) and occasional special events (e.g. performances, exhibitions or talks on specific topics).
Observations

We deployed Reveal-it! as a public projection at three distinct public locations in two different cities over a total period of 20 days (Fig. 3). The goal of the study was to gain insight into more open-ended questions such as: how will onlookers engage with a public visualization of data originating from themselves, in particular in influencing their personal reflections and informal discussions, and how well can a social visualization in a public and physical context convey an implicit message (e.g. save energy) that is supported with exact data (e.g. ones energy own consumption).

Two observers watched people for 6 to 8 hours per observation day at location A, and for 3 to 4 hours at locations B and C. Due to ethical constraints, we never recorded video or audio material, but always kept field notes. We observed and listened in to the visitors, capturing their initial behavior towards the projection (e.g. attention and reaction) as well as the visitors attitudes while interacting with it, discussing among themselves, or contemplating it. To facilitate the process, we devised observational categories that were subsequently refined. In an overall period of 20 days (i.e. 144 observation hours), we took notes of about 442 (out of a total of approximately 558 visitors) unique persons who intentionally approached Reveal-it!, alone or in a group.

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CHI 2013: Changing Perspectives, Paris, France

Data Analysis

We analyzed field notes and visitor opinions using grounded theory to draw bottom-up findings based on the direct quotations and to establish hierarchies and connections among remarkable findings. Apart of descriptive statistics of visitors participation, we used the logs together with the questionnaire test data to evaluate the comparative understandability of the visualization. We further used this data to triangulate participants comments and reactions upon participation.
RESULTS

Figure 3. In-the-wild deployment at location C. Semi-structured Interviews

We first uncover factors that influenced participation and discuss patterns and incentives that let visitors explore Reveal-it!. We then explain how individual and groups explored the visualization and consider different patterns of interpretation, discussion and comparisons.
Situations

The semi-structured interviews typically varied between 7 and 15 minutes and were performed after participants submitted the data entry form in front of the display. Interviews were conducted with individuals or groups, during which we also recorded demographical data, such as age and gender. The interviews included questions regarding the opinions about the Reveal-it! in terms of its understandability and experience, as well as its potential usefulness. Visitors were also invited to freely express their suggestions and thoughts in relation to the project. Throughout the 3 study locations, we conducted 18 interviews with 86 visitors overall (47 male and 39 female), who interacted with the visualization and spent at least 2 minutes in front of it. The interviewed people ranged from single individuals or couples to groups of 20 people of approximately 15 to 70 years old.
Participation Logs

At all study locations, we logged the data entries of the visitors who directly interacted with the visualization (N=198) (see subsection Private Data Entry). Each participation was digitally time-stamped, allowing us to later map the reported visitors data to the overall state of the visualization at the moment of participation (Fig. 2).
Questionnaire Test

To quantitatively assess how well the visualization conveyed comparative information, we conducted a postresponse questionnaire test with 30 participants in the last deployment day at location C. The questionnaire was integrated in the data entry interface and shown on tablet device. The test followed a simple 2-step procedure: 1. Participation. Participants first entered their personal consumption-related data (like normally). They then observed the visualization and while still standing in front of it, proceeded to the post-response questionnaire. 2. Post-Response. Participants provided a response to the questions Compared with my neighbors, my consumption is:, and Compared with my city, my neighborhoods consumption is: expressed as a 5-point Likert scale (range: much less - much more).

Our study sheds light onto how the actual situational contexts in a public space influence the intrinsic motivation to engage with Reveal-it!. The vast majority of visitors at location A and B were interested to actively acquire more knowledge about the installation: approximately 86% at location A (N=344) and all visitors at location B (N=33) intentionally approached the visualization. In contrast, we observed only 52% (N=33) at location C. This result indicates a close connection between the visitors engagement with the visualization and the degree of situational diversity during the deployment. While the context at locations A and B was a rather constant throughout the study (i.e. an exhibition area and a hosting space for a special talk respectively), location C hosted several co-existing situations: it served as 1) a transit space for people, who were committed to daily tasks, 2) an arriving area for guests of three special events, 3) a recreation area and 4) a waiting area for participants of two weekly workshops. From the overall 52 visitors who directly interacted with Reveal-it! at location C, only 8 were daily visitors, 18 were visitors of weekly activities and 26 were visiting a dance spectacle. Previous research discusses that introducing displays into urban spaces transforms the situations specific to these spaces [9]. Accordingly, we analyzed how the interest in Reveal-it! unfolded over time versus the variety of situations and visitors.
Temporal Patterns Weekly Activities. Visitors of weekly activities were more

willing to actively engage with the visualization in dwelling periods before and after the activities when they had time to walk around the space, talk and socialize. We measured an average threshold of 8 minutes from the moment when the visitors entered the space until they would intentionally approach the display. In most of the cases (12 out of 18), this occurred upon arriving, when visitors had to wait for their activity to start.
Special Activities. The visualization enticed active interest only after the end of the special events people had attended: 48% of the data entries were registered during the last quarter of the daily deployment time. The visitors who approached Reveal-it! and entered their data were around

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CHI 2013: Changing Perspectives, Paris, France indicate that in addition to this social awkwardness, a public social visualization can suffer from hindrances that relate to the data, such as fear of inaccurate submissions or submitting values that will stand out.
Evolving Reactions. Most of the visitors understood the significance of the visualization only after closer inspection, that is after reading the visualization labels or the information flyers. After a certain time, participants seemed to want to acquire some form of external confirmation of their initial preconception about the goals of the visualization: So, this is an ecological project. To promote responsible consumption, right? or Why do you have this installation, Is it aiming at making people more conscious?. People tend to be curious and intrigued first by its prominent visual presence, after which the attention switched to the data that was shown. It was only after further active involvement and reflection that people adopted a more critical perspective towards the visualization and its implications. Individual Exploration

Location Days Observed visitors A B C* Total 16 1 3 20 400 33 125 558

Visitors Participation Interviewed intentionally Logs approached 344 33 65 442 172 28 52 198 67 5 14 86

*At location C, we also conducted a questionnaire test with 30 participants

Table 1. Overview of collected data from the three deployments of Reveal-it!.

before, and already looked at the visualization when entering. However, they seemed only motivated to closely approach afterwards: once the activities were over, visitors would progressively gather in front of the projection, talking and pointing at the visualization. Generally, our results demonstrate that the use of visualizations in a public setting entails an unfolding transformation of the pre-existing situation. In particular, this transformation involves a temporal dimension in that certain opportunistic situations such as idling, dwelling, waiting or gathering [30] are more adequate to engage potential users, in contrast to short-term or goal-oriented situations such as arriving, departing or passing-by.
Evolving Incentives

What were the incentives for these unfolding reactions of people to the public visualization?
Physical Setup and Visual Design. The prominent position and size of the installation were key factors in evoking initial curiosity. All visitors throughout the evaluations looked (for more than 2 seconds) at the projection upon entering the space, although some did not approach it. The visual design and the animations further increased peoples curiosity. Approximately 86% (N=74) of the interviewed participants (Table 1) mentioned that these features had some persuasive effect on them, e.g. I saw the colors, that it [the visualization] is moving., Cool graphics, I found it intriguing. The more dynamic features caused positive, even affective attitudes, such as I really liked it, it resembled breathing, which makes you think that it is like something alive. [V22]. Data-related and Social Factors. The altruistic nature of the data positively influenced people to engage with the visualization, with V16 explaining. Of course, it catches the attention visually. [...] But than it gets intriguing, as it is much more different than a boring electricity bill. It is an attractive way to address a serious topic. Approximately 67% (N=58) of the interviewed visitors described the data visualization as intriguing, 50% as innovative, 42% as relevant to the community. However, 73% (N=145) of the visitors who actually entered their data expressed aloud their doubts about how accurate they could remember their household bill. This might explain why some visitors did not directly participate, but observed the display from a distance. Previous studies on public screens have revealed that the implicit expectation to perform in a public context presents a participation barrier [6]. Our observations

Approximately 87% (N=172) of the visitors who submitted the data entry form of the visualization (Table 1) reflected on their own consumption behavior afterwards. Although the installation did not convey any opinion about good or bad energy consumption, the uttered qualifications varied widely from reasonable, [V7], satisfactory, [V12] to it could be lower, [V6], shocking, [V4], too much for living alone [V8]. These interview statements confirm that the comparative features of the visualization provided participants with the opportunity to reflect on their preconceptions about their own energy habits. You might think you are fine, because you dont know how the rest is doing. [...] Here [in the visualization] you can see where you stand. [V20]; I thought, that in my house we are big consumers, as we are four and use video consoles, computers, etc. [...] But when I entered the data and saw ourselves in the graphics, actually we are not doing that bad! [V14]. Approximately 24% of the interviewed participants (21 out of 86) explicitly claimed that the visualization motivated them to enhance their consumption habits in a positive way. For instance visitor V15 explained: I know I use a lot, but now seeing this [the visualization], I would try to do better..Often visitors tended to reason on solutions on how to reduce their consumption. I see it [his consumption value] is high, and it could be lower. [...] For example, I could disconnect devices such as cell phone chargers, televisions, and others.. they consume minimal but plugged still add to your value. [V10].
Group and Social Exploration

At all three locations, the participants who explicitly compared their individual consumption to the other bursts in the graphics were mostly part of a group. The relatively private and trusted situational context of a group often empowered people to put (group) pressure on others to participate. For instance, in one of the groups [V16] formed by five elderly women, a participant entered her data, after

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Session: Tensions in Social Media her friend, and exclaimed happily [...] Look, I spend less than you!, which directly caused the addressed participant to explain why this might happen [...] You live alone, of course you spend less!. The women then proceeded to invite a friend of theirs to compare herself as well: Come one, come, let me see how much you spend!. The participant names shown in the visualization also seemed to support a playful competition among friends. Participants would often read aloud or comment on those visual sectors that were accompanied with a name-tag. They would cheer up their own name when it appeared in the visualization and would be disappointed when the next participant caused it to disappear. Comments of participants indicate that the infographic visual style combined with this social [V4] feature seemed to create a more playful situation to engage with this otherwise seemingly boring or impersonal data, with participant V21 saying:This graphics and the [participant] names gives a social face to the data, its not like looking at an impersonal statistics.
(In)visible Outliers

CHI 2013: Changing Perspectives, Paris, France

Comparative Understanding

Visitors explicitly paid attention to outliers, patterns in the data that visually stood out within the visualization. For instance, visitors frequently commented on particularly long burst: This guy has definitely shot high! [V18]. Others reflected on their personal consumption, for instance by comparing it to a low value: I thought I am doing fine! [...] But I want to see how this guy is achieving it! [pointing at a low burst] [V15]. We observed a similar focus on outliers in the case of neighborhood averages. A vast majority of discussions were concerned with a particularly high neighborhood average, for instance in thinking up its possible causes. People often discussed on the relatively high average consumption of their own neighborhoods, although they never attributed the cause to their own behavior, but instead referred to external factors like construction, infrastructure or city politics: [...] Of course, houses here are not so well isolated [...] They cannot be very energy-efficient, [V16]; Here most of the houses are very old, there is no central heating installed [V13]; [...] There is a lack of general energy awareness, this issue is not really a topic in this neighborhood. [V14]. We observed that this emergent comparison of neighborhood consumptions triggered critical thoughts, even for neighborhoods which were not even represented in the visualization. For instance, in 11 of the 18 interviews at location A, participants noticed out loud that a certain neighborhood was not included - an economically disadvantaged region with a high unemployment rate and where energy bills are subsidized by the government. These participants argued that people from those regions were the highest consumers of electricity in the city. Their comments were often motivated by preconceived ideas, such as they have the whole day the TV on [since they are not working]. [V2], or they steal electricity, so nobody pays. [V5].

We also analyzed the usability and understandability of the projected sunburst visualization. First, we assessed how people understood comparative information about 1) their own energy consumption and 2) the consumption of their neighborhood, conducting a questionnaire test at location C. As a measure of comparative understanding, we calculated the difference between the reported individual consumption (Fig. 2.A) of the test participant and the current average of her neighborhoods consumption (Fig. 2.B). The neighborhood average in the moment of participation was calculated using the data from the participation logs. A nonparametric Spearman rank test revealed a highly significant correlation between this difference and the post-response of the questionnaire ( ! =0.8142, p<.001). This result demonstrates that participants were able to accurately assess their individual consumption, compared to the average of their neighborhood. In contrast, the Spearman rank test for the difference between participants neighborhood consumption (Fig. 2.B) and the city average (Fig. 2.C) revealed ! =0.2215 with p>.01. This suggests that the visualization could not accurately transmit information about participants neighborhood average, compared to the city-wide statistics. This poor performance could be due to the visualization techniques we used. The distinction between participants individual consumption and her neighborhood average is supported by several visual features (color, shape, size). In contrast, neighborhood and city-wide statistics have a similar graphical representation and can be distinguished only by color, which can become difficult to differentiate in the uncontrolled setting of a public projection. The analysis of the questionnaire test data shows that approximately 70% of the test participants, who consumed less than their neighborhood average (10 out of 14) assessed accurately that they are below the average. In contrast, only 30% of the participants who consumed more than their neighborhood average (5 out of 16) reported that they consumed more. This result indicates that participants tend to interpret their own comparative data differently for the different visual extremes. There may be social factors which influence these different interpretations in a social public setting: high-consumers would feel embarrassed and tend to reject their high consumption, whereas low consumers would acknowledge their positive behavior.
DISCUSSION

While data visualization displays have been studied in semi-public and public settings [22, 44, 45, 46], they have not yet been examined in terms of their potential impact on influencing the awareness, discussions, attitudes or opinions of citizens.
Data Comparisons in Social Settings

Our results confirmed the ability of public visualization to convey socially motivated, data-driven information and consecutively inspire both individual reflection and social debate on the underlying topic. Our analysis further uncovered following implications in regard to peoples sensitivity to displaying visualizations in a public settings.

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Playful Comparisons. The public comparison of normally private information did not cause significant privacy concerns, similar to what was reported in [45]. On the contrary, 93% (N=184), of the visitors who directly participated in the visualization provided a name, which was often a quite long and playful pseudonym. These results suggest that visitors seemed to perceive the public visualization as a harmless social experience. While the potential of play has been recently discussed in the context of participatory urban sensing [28], our results encourage further exploration of playful data dissemination and comparisons by way of public visualizations. The ability to compare data values, enhanced by a playful visual design and the explicit personalization of participants data can particularly support group exploration of the data, and consecutively lead to friendly competition and mutual nudging. Interpretation of Comparisons. Both high and low outliers of others were singled out and discussed, the latter causing curiosity on how they have done it. People were able to self-reflect based on what they perceived on the visualization. When asked where they stood, higher consumers tended to negate their negative behavior, assessing their consumption as lower-than or about-theaverage; lower consumers however, assessed their individual consumption more accurately. People also interpreted the apparent averages of their own communities in the context of external factors. Research in psychology has demonstrated that people would try to recognize themselves, and subsequently report about their result more positively than in reality, especially when social comparison is involved [15]. Public visualization researchers should thus be aware of subjectively different interpretations of personal data versus the data of others, when designing as well as evaluating public, user-driven visualizations in a social context. It is still an open question whether such systems actually succeed in questioning or reinterpreting, or just affirming the self-image of participants. Participation Scalability and Visual Complexity

CHI 2013: Changing Perspectives, Paris, France efficient and effective displaying of a very large number of participants. Future studies could explore how the explicit presence of the data entries of others influences the entries of following participants. For instance, some people might feel embarrassed to enter a truthful but relatively higher value when most previously entered values are much lower.
Combining Opportunistic and Targeted Perspectives

While we designed Reveal-it! as an opportunistic yet mediating tool that encourages data-driven social discussion, self-reflection and contemplation, some visitors interacted with the visualization in a rather targeted way. For instance, participants frequently asked whether there existed an online version, so they could later check how the data is doing [V22]. We therefore suggest supporting alternative ways of engaging with the user-generated data, in addition to the original physical setting. Complementary interfaces can be developed that are aimed at different public and private user-contexts (i.e., web, mobile displays, home-based physical energy-feedback systems) and support complementary objectives [26] of social data exploration and analysis.
Public Visualization as an Urban Communication Tool

Reveal-it! was designed as a scalable visualization, where an arbitrary number of visitors are able to submit their personal data. In terms of public participation, our observations and activity logs showed that an average of more that 70% of the visitors who intentionally approached the visualization (N=309), entered their own energy bill estimations. However, the specific characteristics of the sunburst visualization technique increases the complexity and density of the graphical representation the more people add data values (and thus increasing and narrowing the individual bursts). While the analysis of the questionnaire test showed a very good performance in participants understanding of individual comparative data (!=0.8142, pvalue<.001), it is important to note that the visualization was populated with only 22 visual entries for the first tested visitor, but with 55 for the last tested visitor. A public visualization designer should thus consider the scalability of the chosen representation technique (while keeping each participants contribution visible), for instance to afford the

In spite of our rather high-tech data entry and display technologies, people often interpreted Reveal-it! as a tool that provides a bottom-up initiative for the grass root collection and broadcasting of citizen data. This often positively influenced their personal motivation, such as to help us collect as much data as possible, [V18]. Several of the interviewed participants proposed that Reveal-it! could be an alternative solution for conducting a public census in community spaces instead of homes as a much easier, quicker and accessible way... and [it is] also more secure! [V4]. Some suggestions proposed to communicate the data in different public venues such as publication of the results in other cultural and educational centers [V10]; or [to]contact and broadcast this data in the mass-media. [...] It might not be statistically correct but would impact a lot of citizens. [V8]. These spontaneous visionary ideas from participations seem conceptually similar to those discussed in the context of participatory sensing. Energy (consumption), among others, can be interpreted as a citizen-related urban data activity that acts l i k e a s o c i a l c u r re n c y w i t h i n a n d a c ro s s communities [27]. Consequently, public visualization can be considered as a potential mediator for social communication and constructive feedback among urban stakeholders (i.e. the citizens, the media, the government) on other relevant civic issues, such as, pollution, criminality and beyond.
Dataset, Representation and Trust

Reveal-it! consisted of a relatively simple representation technique in a rather infographic style. Such a visual style might also impact its trustworthiness along with factors like professional appearance of the material or the showing associations with a trustworthy organization reported in [45]. While most of the people appreciated the visual approach and its simplicity and clearness, some specifically requested a web-interface to look for more

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Session: Tensions in Social Media data, or to discover the ideal values. Participants who seemed more knowledgeable on energy issues were concerned that the visualization did not capture water or carbon footprint and even meat consumption, some of them proposing to provide us with a better or the right data. Therefore, a public visualization should ideally balance the issues of sufficient information capacity and intuitive visual understanding, while still allowing for parallel interaction styles, from an at-a-glance overview to more explorative strategies that allow a deeper sense-making. In addition, public visualization designers should consider that this issue not only relates to aesthetic preferences, but also to the expertise and background of the onlookers and their interest or motivation on the underlying topic.
Unfolding Engagement

CHI 2013: Changing Perspectives, Paris, France

CONCLUSION

Previous research has pointed out that the diversity of situations in the public sphere may pose challenges in urban display design [9]. We showed specifically how the opportunistic engagement promoted by public visualization is influenced by the types [30] and variety of situational contexts. For instance, people engage with public visualizations easier in situations such as idling, dwelling, waiting or gathering, in contrast to short-lived situations such as arriving, departing or passing-by. In addition, our findings suggest that engagement with the visualization involves certain dynamics that tend to unfold over time. While it is well known that prominent visibility [22] and presence of others [6] attracts attention and evokes initial curiosity to public displays, we discovered that the actual engagement with an underlying topic involves a temporal flow, namely first to realize that the display is a visualization, then to understand what the visualization is about, and finally, how to relate to the presented information.
Moral Aspects

We investigated a public visualization of crowd-sourced, self-reported energy expenditure as an approach for encouraging awareness and opportunistic discourse on the socially relevant issue of energy consumption. Our in-thewild deployments in three distinct informal public settings empowered citizens across locations to reflect on their own as well as their communal energy consumption issues. We leveraged our findings to propose social and opportunistic data comparisons as essential to raising awareness and provoking discussion. Our results should encourage future case studies that address the public and visual communication of data as a catalyst for increasing civic awareness. For instance, other urban issues such as air pollution, council expenditures or traffic can benefit from such social visualizations to open up and contextualize the relevant data in the public sphere. In addition, such visualizations could allow opportunistic data entry to encourage voluntary, grass-roots data collection and communication among urban stakeholders for social and political purposes, such as public opinion, census and alike. We also observed several challenges involved in integrating socially motivated data visualizations into the public context. While the use of abstract aggregate visualization techniques can evoke curiosity and support comparisons among arbitrary individuals and groups, it may impact the accuracy of understanding and the perception of trust. However, the explicit expectation to submit openly ones own data may induce feelings of embarrassment, which may ultimately lead to false data entries and negating the truthfulness of the display. Lastly, our work highlights the challenges of crafting study methods in-the-wild that are able to capture the subtleness of integrating technological means such as visualization projections to encourage an unpredictable, public discourse. Some of the most salient are the discrepancy in self-reflection and the unfolding temporal dimension of engagement with the visualization display.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank Medialab Prado, Centro Cultural Espaa Crdoba and both the community centers La Bareloneta and Sant Marti, Barcelona for making this study possible. Special thanks to Juan Pablo Carrascal, Guillermo Maln, Penelope Maldonado, Uta Hinrichs, Martin Inderbitzin, Sytse Wierenga, Andrea Rosales, Ernesto Arroyo, Rodrigo Oliveira and Sebastian Mealla.

Research has highlighted the existence of moral aspects of the public, collective experience of online social media [13]. Observations from our study underline some important moral aspects of how visualization of socially relevant data is collectively interpreted in the public sphere. For instance, specifically high neighborhood consumptions were often attributed to issues related to local urban politics or infrastructure, while economically or socially deprived neighborhoods were publicly discussed as governmentally supported outliers. While these observations confirm the potential of public visualization as a catalyst of critical debate on civic topics, it also calls for awareness of unexpected (and potentially unwanted) group dynamics that may unfold and might even enforce negative social effects, such as stigma. For instance, people or neighborhoods who intentionally or not do not take part in the visualization might still be affected due to this uncontrolled social discussion and reflection. This phenomenon implies several implicit responsibilities when designing a public visualization such as its inevitable use as a subjectively interpretive and seemingly data-driven, thus accurate, artifact.

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