DataGarden: Exploring our Community in a VR Data Visualization

Abstract

As our society is becoming increasingly data-dependent, more and more people rely on charts and graphs to understand and communicate complex data. While such visualizations effectively reveal meaningful trends, they unavoidably aggregate data into points and bars that are overly simplified depictions of ourselves and our communities. We present DataGarden, a system that supports embodied interactions with humane data representations in an immersive VR environment. Through the system, we explore ways to rethink the traditional visualization approach and allow people to empathize more deeply with the people behind the data.