Sitting With Data: Data Weaving as a Communal Practice

Craft-based approaches to working with data are increasingly explored; however they are rarely explored as an ongoing practice of different communities. In this paper, we introduce data weaving as a collective practice of working with data through bead-woven bracelets. To explore how this practice unfolds, we conducted a qualitative study of a self-organized community, based on a group interview with four people of the community. We focus on how data decisions are made in situ, as participants adapt datasets to material constraints, respond to changing or incomplete data, and discuss questions of privacy and public display. Our findings show that crafting with data shifts data work toward shared interpretation. We contribute with data weaving as a communal form of sensemaking through data that foreground process, relationships and aspects of care among people who perform it.