Grasping data through play: Exploring co-design activities for children’s engagement with personal data

With the increase of “smart” toys and other devices that collect personal data from children and their carers at home and/or in public places, questions of how to raise an awareness of the value of personal data in children and how to promote an active engagement of personal data for the purpose of self-awareness have become more pressing. To address this, the Grasping Data project explores the potential of playful visualization and physicalization activities-designed with and for children-to make their personal data visible and to promote an understanding of collecting and analyzing such data for children’s own benefit. However, while research on personal data vis- and physicalization activities and bespoke toolkits exists, designing such activities for young children (3-8) and their carers is underexplored. At the same time, designing activities that focus on personal data comes with its own challenges: how “personal” data is defined in the first place, what are children’s perspectives on these, and how can navigate ethical and privacy concerns in a constructive way with children and their carers? Building on this, in this workshop paper we introduce a play-based activity to explore how adults engage and interpret personal data through play and tangible visualizations. Through this activity, we aim to explore and discuss how adults define ‘personal data’ and the potential of play and visualizations to help them ‘grasp’ the meaning and value of their data.