Visualising Attitudes to Data: A Lego-based exploration

This workshop employs the methods of our ongoing collaborative research project for the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) conducted in collaboration with the Universities of Liverpool, Exeter, and Surrey. Our workshops are designed to visualise how organisations can improve their understanding of data. This analysis is framed around principles of confidentiality, integrity, and availability (See Von Solms & Van Niekerk, 2013 & Samonas & Coss, 2014). Employing Lego as a creative tool has been used in previous studies such as Coles-Kemp, Jensen, & Heath (2020) who held workshops for participants to outline their perceived cyber (in)securities. Other studies have focused on risk visualisation (Hall, Heath, & Coles-Kemp, 2015) and everyday data security (Coles-Kemp & Hansen, 2017). Asprion et al. (2020) similarly utilised Lego Serious Play as an educational tool for visualisation and Rashid et al (2020) have used Lego as a tool for wargaming cyberattacks. Our research emphasises the importance of sociotechnical factors in decision-making within organisations, highlighting attitudes to the use of data, data awareness levels, and perceived security threats.

Our workshop involves participants mapping data use in their personal and professional lives using Lego. Along with a colour-coded guide and annotation, the goal is for each group to produce their own personal/professional visualisation, highlighting attitudes to data with explicit reference to its confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Groups are asked to share and discuss their models, which serves as a reflective process while also providing rich, ethnographic data for the research team. The workshop length is two hours, and all necessary equipment is provided. The goals of the workshop are to explore the role of data among research participants. It poses the question of what the main challenges and risks are to utilising data effectively.

Participants are given an introductory skill-building task, and then volunteers are sought to narrate their model, exploring the meaning behind key components. From this, groups of 2 to 4 people are assigned to work together on building a shared-task model that focuses on the research questions. Time is allowed for brainstorming, and participants will be asked to reflect on a series of prompts to assist with what can seem like an abstract task. Participants are provided with a colour-coding guide to help visualise positive or negative attitudes towards confidentiality, integrity, and data availability. The exercise demonstrates how these attitudes can vary based on the context of a particular data flow. While our ongoing research is focused on British attitudes to data in the workplace - with a view to informing future policy direction in the UK government - our workshop has a wider conceptual value. We aim to offer key contributions to debates around the flow and interactions between personal and professional data; use of data in the workplace; surveillance concerns; everyday security dilemmas, accessibility and availability of data for innovation and beyond. Furthermore, we aim to demonstrate the value of creative methodologies in exploring complex phenomena.