GRASPING DATA: Co-creating Physicalizations to Empower Young Children to Interact with, Understand, and Benefit from Their Personal Data

Grasping Data will change how we think about children and their personal data. We go beyond current emphases on privacy and protection by co-creating cutting-edge, child-centred tools and pedagogies with young children, helping them understand and directly benefit from their own data.

We achieve this by advancing diverse research fields of early learning, cognitive psychology, child-centred design, data ethics, data visualization, and computer science to explore the potential of Data Physicalization for children in their early years (aged 3-8) to construct (with adults) physical representations of their personal data that they can touch, explore, talk about and learn with. Our focus on the youngest learners pushes the boundaries of helping all ages to understand and benefit from data in an increasingly digital world.

This proposal is time sensitive. Artificial Intelligence is accelerating ways children's personal data is already captured and processed by others. Toothbrushes monitor their hygiene, smart toys capture their conversations, activity watches capture their movement, education platforms record their (mis)behaviour. Yet children's consent for this data is either acquired through adult caregivers (who themselves may not be confident about data), or not at all.

Whilst there are efforts to improve children's understanding of data, research and educational initiatives tend to focus on older children and online protection. Yet, personal data is likely to be highly engaging for young children as it can reveal much about themselves: where they have been, what they said, how active or loud they are. By creating new forms of representation and activities, Grasping Data will enable us to tap children's interest to help them understand and value their personal data, before thinking about whether to give it to others.

The aim of Grasping Data is to empower young children by enabling them to create, explore, understand, and directly benefit from their personal data. The project's objectives will create methods for measuring children's understanding of personal data then develop new approaches, physicalization designs, and activities to improve understanding. In doing so, the project will advance our knowledge of the benefits of physical interaction in learning as well as how best to work in partnership with children.

These objectives are addressed by working with over 270 children and three organisational partners in three contexts: in schools, Edinburgh Zoo, and Glasgow Science Centre. Work progresses from children using everyday physical materials like Lego to represent simple data like age or preferences, to cutting-edge interactive physicalizations dynamically representing personal data such as activity, location, or loudness.

This interdisciplinary project will contribute knowledge across disciplines and outputs that can scale impact beyond academia: from personal data physicalization toolkits for educators to 3D mementos and exhibits that enhance and extend visitor experiences. The project will change perceptions of children and their data, and accelerate research activity, teaching practices, policy and ethical approaches that recognise young children's potential to understand and benefit from how their data is captured. Grasping Data will advance technologies to extend how we represent data - from screens to physical spaces - and lead to more active roles for all users in design, starting with society's youngest.

The greatest impact of this project will be for children, who will engage, enjoy, and understand their data-saturated world better, and have greater confidence that they should, and can, play a role in the design of their futures.