Data Embroidery: Exploring Alternative Mediums for Personal Physicalization

Abstract

Our work explores the use of embroidery as a medium for personal data representation. Personal physicalization is at the intersection of personal visualization and physicalization. More precisely, personal physicalization uses tangible objects to represent data in a personal context. This unique design space inspired us to explore alternative mediums to integrate data with personal artifacts, as well as facilitate the exploration of a multi-sensory data encoding. We first developed a workflow for authoring embroidered physicalizations. Then, we used this process to create an embroidered blanket based on text message data.