Data: Visualization, Literacy, Pedagogy by Catherine D'Ignazio
This is a long-form blog post from the MIT Center for Civic Media blog that examines non-binary g... more This is a long-form blog post from the MIT Center for Civic Media blog that examines non-binary gender data in the context of big data and computational applications circa 2016. Gender is almost always treated as a binary, immutable characteristic of humans. These applications thus reinforce the idea that the world is only made up of two groups (male, female) which is categorically, empirically, and historically untrue. The blog post explores some of the ethical territory for how, when, and whether non-binary gender should be represented in large data sets.
Working with data is an increasingly powerful way of making knowledge claims about the world, how... more Working with data is an increasingly powerful way of making knowledge claims about the world, however there is a growing gap between those who can work effectively with data and those who cannot. Because it is state and corporate actors who possess the resources to collect, store and analyze data, individuals (as citizens, as community members, as professionals) are more likely to be the subjects of data than to use data for civic purposes. There is a strong case to be made for cultivating data literacy for people in non-technical fields as one means of bridging that gap. Literacy, following the model of popular education proposed by Paulo Freire, requires not only the acquisition of technical skills but also the emancipation achieved through the literacy process. This essay proposes the term creative data literacy to recognize that non-technical learners may need alternate pathways towards data than those coming from technical fields. Here I offer five tactics to cultivate creative data literacy for empowerment. They are grounded in my experience as a data literacy researcher, educator and software developer. Each tactic is explained and introduced with examples. I assert that working towards creative data literacy is not only the work of educators but also data creators, data publishers, tool developers, tool and visualization designers, tutorial authors, government, community organizers and artists.
—In this paper, we begin to outline how feminist theory may be productively applied to informatio... more —In this paper, we begin to outline how feminist theory may be productively applied to information visualization research and practice. Other technology-and design-oriented fields such as Science and Technology Studies, Human-Computer Interaction, Digital Humanities, and Geography/GIS have begun to incorporate feminist principles into their research. Feminism is not (just) about women, but rather draws our attention to questions of epistemology – who is included in dominant ways of producing and communicating knowledge and whose perspectives are marginalized. We describe potential applications of feminist theory to influence the information design process as well as to shape the outputs from that process.
Data-centric thinking is rapidly becoming vital to the way we work, communicate and understand in... more Data-centric thinking is rapidly becoming vital to the way we work, communicate and understand in the 21st century. This has led to a proliferation of tools for novices that help them operate on data to clean, process, aggregate, and visualize it. Unfortunately, these tools have been designed to support users rather than learners that are trying to develop strong data literacy. This paper outlines a basic definition of data literacy and uses it to analyze the tools in this space. Based on this analysis, we propose a set of pedagogical design principles to guide the development of tools and activities that help learners build data literacy. We outline a rationale for these tools to be strongly focused, well guided, very inviting, and highly expandable. Based on these principles, we offer an example of a tool and accompanying activity that we created. Reviewing the tool as a case study, we outline design decisions that align it with our pedagogy. Discussing the activity that we led in academic classroom settings with undergraduate and graduate students, we show how the sketches students created while using the tool reflect their adeptness with key data literacy skills based on our definition. With these early results in mind, we suggest that to better support the growing number of people learning to read and speak with data, tool designers and educators must design from the start with these strong pedagogical principles in mind.
Big Data projects are being rapidly embraced by organizations working in the social good sector. ... more Big Data projects are being rapidly embraced by organizations working in the social good sector. This has led to a proliferation of new projects, with strong criticisms in response focusing on the disempowering aspects of these projects. This paper identifies four main problematic aspects of Big Data projects in the social good sector to focus on: lack of transparency, extractive collection, technological complexity, and control of impact. Leveraging Paulo Freire's concept of "Popular Education", we identify an opportunity to work on these issues in empowering ways through literacy education. We discuss existing definitions of data literacy and find a need to create an extended definition of Big Data literacy. Surveying existing approaches to building data literacy, we identify the need for new approaches and technologies to address the problematic aspects of Big Data projects. To flesh out this concept of "Popular Big Data", we close by offering seven ideas for how the field can ensure that Big Data projects are in line with the values of organizations working in the social good sector.
We propose that a bottom-up, participatory, grassroots approach to environmental
investigation an... more We propose that a bottom-up, participatory, grassroots approach to environmental
investigation and data collection addresses the key issues of inclusion, accountability,
and credibility, by building public participation into the data lifecycle.
We envisage forms of participation in which members of the public take part in creating,
analyzing, and understanding datasets, and using them to advocate for change.
In the following FAQ essay, we refer to this as a “Small Data” approach, and examine
the implications of this approach in a series of questions and proposed answers.
Civic Media by Catherine D'Ignazio
In the last ten years, a growing range of products, gadgets, toys and new initiatives has made it... more In the last ten years, a growing range of products, gadgets, toys and new initiatives has made it possible for people to collect data about the physical world around them, share this information and create novel data sets. The rise of quotidian sensors promises to democratize science, but raises complex questions about what science requires in addition to data, and whether access to sensors turns cities into smart cities, journalists into data analysts and citizens into scientists. We identify and explore five paradigms for the use of sensors by everyday citizens: smart cities, sensor journalism, crowdsourced journalism, citizen sensing and citizen science. We include two case studies that complicate aspirations for citizen sensors as a tool for empowerment. One case is Safecast, a start-up that formed after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan which designed a highly accurate radiation sensor in order to monitor radiation levels in the environment and verify whether the government was publishing accurate information. Our second case considers the coquí, a DIY water conductivity sensor that D'Ignazio has been using to teach journalism students about water quality. From these case studies, we see evidence that individuals empowered by sensors are best understood not as citizen scientists or crowdsourcing subjects, but as effective and empowered citizens. We posit that Michael Schudson’s “monitorial citizen” may be the most apt paradigm to consider for the emancipatory potential of popular sensing.
From the International Handbook of Media Literacy Education.
The growing diversity of news sources available online has led to a significant methodological ch... more The growing diversity of news sources available online has led to a significant methodological change in field of global news coverage. Studies of media attention and framing require sophisticated analytic tools to permit analysis of a large volume of content consumed by a broad readership. Geographic focus continues to be a topic of interest to media organizations, media analysts, and media consumers. Detecting and recognizing geographic locations (toponyms) in news media is a well-established field with many commercial and open source tools available. An evaluation is performed of various existing tools to compare their accuracy and appropriateness for use within media organizations and for media analysis. The concept of focus, indicating the location an article is primarily about, is extended into the news realm and added to an existing tool to increase relevance for the aforementioned applications. Potential applications as well as initial experiments using geoparsing for news organizations are discussed, in addition to ideas for future work building on these tools.
Researchers have tested a variety of personal informatics systems to encourage diversity in the p... more Researchers have tested a variety of personal informatics systems to encourage diversity in the political leaning, geography, and demographics of information sources, often with a belief in the normative value of exposure to diverse information sources. Methods attempted have included information labeling of media sources, personalized metrics of reading behavior, personalized visualization of social media behavior, recommendation systems, and social introductions. Although some of these systems demonstrate positive results for the metrics they define, substantial questions remain on the interpretation of these results and their implications for future design. We identify challenges in defining normative values of diversity, potential algorithmic exclusion for some groups, and the role of personal tracking as surveillance. Furthermore, we outline challenges for evaluating systems and defining the meaningful social impact for information diversity systems operating at scale.
Feminist Tech & Inclusive Design by Catherine D'Ignazio
Science and Engineering Ethics, 2018
This paper explores three cases of Do-It-Yourself, open-source technologies developed within the ... more This paper explores three cases of Do-It-Yourself, open-source technologies developed within the diverse array of topics and themes in the communities around the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (Public Lab). These cases focus on aerial mapping, water quality monitoring and civic science practices. The techniques discussed have in common the use of accessible, community-built technologies for acquiring data. They are also concerned with embedding collabora-tive and open source principles into the objects, tools, social formations and data sharing practices that emerge from these inquiries. The focus is on developing processes of collaborative design and experimentation through material engagement All authors have made equal contribution to the work. * Hagit Keysar
Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2019
Breastfeeding is not only a public health issue, but also a matter of economic and social justice... more Breastfeeding is not only a public health issue, but also a matter of economic and social justice. This paper presents an iteration of a participatory design process to create spaces for re-imagining products, services, systems, and policies that support breastfeeding in the United States. Our work contributes to a growing literature around making hackathons more inclusive and accessible, designing participatory processes that center marginalized voices, and incorporating systems-and relationship-based approaches to problem solving. By presenting an honest assessment of the successes and shortcomings of the first iteration of a hackathon, we explain how we restructured the second Make the Breast Pump Not Suck hackathon in service of equity and systems design. Key to our re-imagining of conventional innovation structures is a focus on experience design, where joy and play serve as key strategies to help people and institutions build relationships across lines of difference. We conclude with a discussion of design principles applicable not only to designers of events, but to social movement researchers and HCI scholars trying to address oppression through the design of technologies and socio-technical systems.
In recent years, the CHI community has begun to discuss how HCI research could improve the experi... more In recent years, the CHI community has begun to discuss how HCI research could improve the experience of motherhood. In this paper, we take up the challenge of designing for this complex life phase and present an analysis of data collected from a design process that included over 1,000 mother-submitted ideas to improve the breast pump, a technology that allows mothers around the world to collect and store their breast milk. In addition to presenting a range of ideas to improve this specific technology, we discuss environmental, legal, social, and emotional dimensions of the postpartum period that suggest opportunities for a range of additional supportive technologies. We close with insights linking our findings to ongoing discussions related to Feminist HCI theory, crowdsourcing, and participatory design.
This paper outlines questions about the role of design and the designer in addressing issues of s... more This paper outlines questions about the role of design and the designer in addressing issues of social justice, particularly in light of the fact that justice issues are not purely technical in nature. Treating them as such may lead to design for an unjust, unhealthy status quo. Using a case study of a large, human-centered hackathon where participants innovated breastpump designs, I suggest three preliminary ideas for how designers might tackle the ecology of a sociotechnical problem more holistically.
Art, Place, Cartography by Catherine D'Ignazio
Papers by Catherine D'Ignazio
Proceedings of the Design Society
Design and engineering are socio-technical enterprises used to solve real-world problems. However... more Design and engineering are socio-technical enterprises used to solve real-world problems. However, students in these fields are often under-equipped to consider the ethical and societal implications of their work. Our prior work showed that these societal considerations are more consistently embedded in design pedagogy in non-engineering than in engineering courses at MIT. Here, we examine underlying causes for this through a survey of instructors (231 courses from 29 departments). The main contribution of this work is an analysis of whether and how instructors incorporate social, ethical, and policy considerations in design pedagogy. The majority of respondents (60.6%) included these topics in their courses, primarily through discussion of social justice, identity groups, and ethics. These concepts were included more in non-engineering courses (65.8%) than engineering courses (46.9%). Many instructors, especially in engineering, cited irrelevance as the reason for not engaging with...
Uploads
Data: Visualization, Literacy, Pedagogy by Catherine D'Ignazio
investigation and data collection addresses the key issues of inclusion, accountability,
and credibility, by building public participation into the data lifecycle.
We envisage forms of participation in which members of the public take part in creating,
analyzing, and understanding datasets, and using them to advocate for change.
In the following FAQ essay, we refer to this as a “Small Data” approach, and examine
the implications of this approach in a series of questions and proposed answers.
Civic Media by Catherine D'Ignazio
From the International Handbook of Media Literacy Education.
Feminist Tech & Inclusive Design by Catherine D'Ignazio
Art, Place, Cartography by Catherine D'Ignazio
Papers by Catherine D'Ignazio
investigation and data collection addresses the key issues of inclusion, accountability,
and credibility, by building public participation into the data lifecycle.
We envisage forms of participation in which members of the public take part in creating,
analyzing, and understanding datasets, and using them to advocate for change.
In the following FAQ essay, we refer to this as a “Small Data” approach, and examine
the implications of this approach in a series of questions and proposed answers.
From the International Handbook of Media Literacy Education.
There are several different definitions of missing data. While some might refer to data that is literally absent, as in statistical approaches to missing data that attempts to interpolate what might fill in the gaps,1 others, such as the artist and educator Mimi Ọnụọha, take “missing data” to mean something more political — “something [that] does not exist, but it should.”2 In the same line as Ọnụọha, our definition of missing data refers to information that goes uncounted (or otherwise unrecorded), despite social and political demands that such data should be collected and made available. Our concept of missing data may include entirely absent data, as well as data that is sparse, neglected, poorly collected and maintained, purposely removed, difficult to access, infrequently updated, contested, and/or underreported. Missing data, in the expanded definition we propose in this essay, is a political concept. On one hand, missing data can function as a challenge from civil society to formal institutions, including governments, religious institutions, and corporations. In these cases, it represents a demand from specific communities about public issues that concern society writ large. On the other hand, missing data may be actively desired and produced by marginalized groups seeking to protect information about their community and culture from the eyes of institutions. In these cases, the data is “missing” for institutions, which make a demand for information that is actively protected by and kept within a community. In this sense, missing data is also a relational concept because it implies a directionality — an informatic demand from one group or institution to another group or institution. Missing data is not always a bad thing, nor always a good thing. Instead of thinking of it normatively, the locus of analysis should be on the social context, who is making the demand to whom, and the political context for which specific information is deemed to be missing. Our definition differs from other more technical notions of missing data that may not consider or highlight the unbalanced power relationships between different social actors, such as marginalized communities and the state. In this sense, the definition of missing data proposed here explicitly includes a political demand, because the group making the demand for information is trying to charge another group or institution with the responsibility for the absence of this data. When this relates to marginalized groups making demands on the state, groups are also trying to assert the institutional neglect of the group or issue represented by the data. Given the focus on the datafied state, this article will focus particularly on missing data related to governments, where civil society groups demand that the government collect specific data or where the government demands data that communities seek to protect.