Tangible Data Exploration: Creating Card Games for Sensemaking

Participatory sensing has largely focused on the collection and dissemination of data, paying little attention to the fact that people often struggle to use the data and relate it to their daily lives. However, data is strongly connected to the context, environment and community within which it is gathered, whether by human or machine. Thus, those who are local to the data - especially those who participate in its collection - can bring valuable insights and can themselves gain value from interpreting it. This paper offers an approach for designing interactive narrative games with civic datasets, which are designed to make data easier to interact with, discuss and share in informal settings. It describes the planning and execution of a public data exploration event based around these activities. This work will be of use to people who are designing civic interfaces to support participatory sensemaking from data, especially in informal settings.