Exploring the Potential of Physical Visualizations

Although physical objects have been used for information presentation for a long time, physical visualizations only recently started to attract interest in the HCI and InfoVis communities. While physical visualizations have the quality to evoke user fascination and curiosity, our understanding of their benefits regarding data exploration and the creation of effective representations are still limited. This paper describes several projects in the area of physical visualizations, all with the goal to explore their potential and limitations. First findings show that a promising direction of physical visualizations is the area of personal data, where they can offer a more creative and mindful way to look and reflect on ones' data.