Engaging in (un)sustainable practices: Making data physical

This work explores the potential of doing collaborative data physicalization for discussing (un)sustainable practices. For this purpose, it draws on experiences from several data physicalization workshops during the period of 2018-2022, conducted in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, which were available to mostly inexpert groups of people, including almost a hundred primary school students. This paper particularly focuses on a recent held dataphys workshop with over 20 adult participants, such as including international students and climate activists. Based on learner reports (self-assessment questionnaires) (N=20), and observations, it was found that the process of making data physicalizations in workshop and educational settings can be beneficial for engaging in collaborative creative and critical discussion of (un)sustainable practices. Particularly, the participants positively indicated to have learned from the dataphys workshop on a 5-point Likert scale and agreed that it enabled (1) critical thinking, (2) data understanding, (3) creativity, (4) collaboration, and (5) awareness of (un)sustainable practices. This paper presents the workshop format, including ingredients such as live cartoon capturing, and challenges in realizing such value in the context of sustainability, such as including a wider public, the conscious use of data and materials, and discussable effective outcomes.