Street Infographics is an urban intervention that visually represent data that is contextually related to local issues, and is visualized through situated displays that are placed within the social and public context of an urban environment. Based on the design characteristics of urban visualization, we defined six specific design principles and applied these in the deployment of a low-fidelity prototype during an in-the-wild study. Designed to augment an existing street sign with socially- and locally-relevant information, the resulting urban visualization encourages people to gain local knowledge, reflect on their perception and even foster social interaction. We describe the design of Street Infographics and its effect on local residents, as measured before and after our intervention. This case study is considered one of the first steps towards a better understanding of the true potential of the use of data visualization in a public context, such as for engaging citizens in acting towards a more qualitative and sustainable neighborhood.
Publications
Valkanova N., Claes S., Behrens M., Vande Moere A. (2015). Information-Bombing: Confronting the Public to Civic Data. Workshop on Beyond Personal Informatics: Designing for Experiences with Data, co-located with CHI'15. CHI'15, 18-23 April 2015(art.nr. 16) ACM.
Claes S., Vande Moere A. (2014). What Public Visualization Can Learn From Street Art. IEEE VIS 2014 Arts Program. VISAP'14. Paris, 9-13 November 2014 (pp. 51-55) IEEE.
Claes S., Vande Moere A. (2013). Street Infographics: Raising Awareness of Local Issues through a Situated Urban Visualization. International Symposium on Pervasive Displays. PerDis'13. Mountain View, CA, USA, 4-5 July 2013 (pp. 133-138) ACM. Acceptance rate: 71%. Citation count: 14 (source: google scholar)