The Air Quality Lens: Ambiguity as Opportunity to Reactivate Environmental Data

Abstract

The use of low-cost sensors to collect environmental data can enable citizens to express environmental concerns and foster community building and activism. However, when made public, citizen data is often detached from the subjective experiences integral to citizen sensing. Our work with youngsters from diverse backgrounds explores how existing environmental datasets can be reactivated to engage new stakeholders and discussions. We present a research through design project with air quality data and draw attention to the role of ambiguity in our design process. We synthesize our reflections by discussing three design aspects that can make sense of ambiguity and encourage critical engagements with environmental data. Our goal is to offer a design-oriented account of how citizen-generated environmental data can be reactivated to express matters of concern.

Design and Responsive Technologies for Human Well-being

“…In the second category, we find projects pertaining to the fields of digital placemaking, digital wayfinding, or digital sensemaking (Dall'Osso et al, 2022). Here, sensors diffused in space through citizen action (De Greve et al, 2022) collect information that can be translated into sensations that can be experienced through space.…”

A framework for making citizen science inclusive with storytelling methods

“…In the second phase, a workshop was organized in both pilots where the participants received a kit to assemble an air quality lens (De Greve et al, 2022). This air quality lens (Figure 2) can alter photographs based on real-time data from nearby air quality sensors of the network Sensor.…”

“…FIGURE 3Photograph with a green and blue filter applied by the air quality lens. The air quality is good(De Greve et al, 2022).…”

Designing Data Interactions for Sustainable Consumption

“…imaginaries and speculations) [11,112,113,114], more-than-human focus on sustainability [33,65,122,134], and exploring new ways of engaging with environmental data (e.g. through narrations [13,89,94], combining data and subjective experiences [22,23,27,64,94], embodiment [11,96], and physicalisation [109,115]). Rossitto et al [106] outline the contemporary focus of SHCI research by stating that there is a need to "[...] move towards an ethics of sustainability that not only engages the moral responsibility to act, but also the value of making meaning (not only finding solutions) in the practices of sustainable living" [106, p. 4].…”

“…The artefact sparked engagement in, and critical reflection about, the sorts of data that we encounter on a day-to-day basis and the inherent uncertainties in this data. Additionally, De Greve et al [27] drew on the notion of critical engagement as a component for reactivating environmental data into matters of concern as opposed to matters of fact. Drawing on both art and science, Soden et al [113] held a Disaster and Climate Change Artathon to provide critical reframings of climate data.…”