From Touch to Change: Understanding Public Engagement in Data Physicalization for Social Good

Data physicalization, which encodes data in physical form, has been increasingly used to engage the public with issues of social good. While public engagement is often invoked as a motivation or expected outcome, it has not been systematically examined as a design objective. This gap raises two key challenges: what characterizes engagement in data physicalization for social good (Phys4Good), and how it can be effectively designed. In this work, we address these challenges by first curating a corpus of 45 Phys4Good projects and deriving a design space structured around a modified three-act framework comprising Stage, Encounter, and Impact. We then conducted semi-structured interviews with designers of eight projects to identify recurring challenges and strategies for fostering engagement. Finally, we demonstrated the effectiveness of our design space and strategies through a case study, which showed that they can guide designers in structuring engagement, anticipating barriers, and creating more impactful Phys4Good experiences.