Chemicals in the Creek: designing a situated data physicalization of open government data with the community

Over the last decade growing amounts of government data have been made available in an attempt to increase transparency and civic participation, but it is unclear if this data serves non-expert communities due to gaps in access and the technical knowledge needed to interpret this “open” data. We conducted a two-year design study focused on the creation of a community-based data display using the United States Environmental Protection Agency data on water permit violations by oil storage facilities on the Chelsea Creek in Massachusetts to explore whether situated data physicalization and Participatory Action Research could support meaningful engagement with open data. We selected this data as it is of interest to local groups and available online, yet remains largely invisible and inaccessible to the Chelsea community. The resulting installation, Chemicals in the Creek, responds to the call for community-engaged visualization processes and provides an application of situated methods of data representation. It proposes event-centered and power-aware modes of engagement using contextual and embodied data representations. The design of Chemicals in the Creek is grounded in interactive workshops and we analyze it through event observation, interviews, and community outcomes. We reflect on the role of community engaged research in the Information Visualization community relative to recent conversations on new approaches to design studies and evaluation.