Educating Youth About Data Collection

How can the complex—and important—subject of data collection be explained to both youth and adults in an intuitive way? Schema created an interactive media installation for Seattle’s Pacific Science Center that teaches visitors about this timely topic. Through the experience, visitors answer questions about the Pacific Northwest, see how their answers create a special shape—a metaphor for their data profile—and then choose to add what they’ve created to a large-scale visualization that they can explore. Visitors leave the experience with a better grasp of the concept of data, how they create it, and how it lives in the world.

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Dynamic Data Visualization

A large, dynamically rendered data visualization is projected at the center of the exhibit. Visitors can sort the dataset based on different topics tied to living in the Pacific Northwest.

An Engaging Interactive Experience‍

Visitors are guided through a series of questions about the Pacific Northwest on touch screens. With each question they answer, they create a corresponding shape with increasing complexity. Underscoring the concept of choice, at the completion of the questionnaire, visitors can elect to anonymously add their shape to the central data visualization. The most recent 200 submissions are displayed at any given time.