  Over the last decade growing amounts of government data have been made
available in an attempt to increase transparency and civic participation, but
it is unclear if this data serves non-expert communities due to gaps in access
and the technical knowledge needed to interpret this "open" data. We conducted
a two-year design study focused on the creation of a community-based data
display using the United States Environmental Protection Agency data on water
permit violations by oil storage facilities on the Chelsea Creek in
Massachusetts to explore whether situated data physicalization and
Participatory Action Research could support meaningful engagement with open
data. We selected this data as it is of interest to local groups and available
online, yet remains largely invisible and inaccessible to the Chelsea
community. The resulting installation, Chemicals in the Creek, responds to the
call for community-engaged visualization processes and provides an application
of situated methods of data representation. It proposes event-centered and
power-aware modes of engagement using contextual and embodied data
representations. The design of Chemicals in the Creek is grounded in
interactive workshops and we analyze it through event observation, interviews,
and community outcomes. We reflect on the role of community engaged research in
the Information Visualization community relative to recent conversations on new
approaches to design studies and evaluation.
