Human Data Interaction

Abstract: Data is everywhere. Today people are faced with the daunting task of understanding and managing the data created by them, about them, and for them, due to the lack of mechanisms between them and the data. In this talk, I will use some examples in my own research to explain how we can bridge the gap between humans and data through a series of interaction mechanisms. I will first explain how we can use agencies such as recommender systems to help people manage the access to their personal data. I will then explain how data visualisations can be used to help people extract better insights from their personal data. I will also introduce my on-going work about applying data visualisations to public data to help people make better decisions and, beyond visualisations, telling stories about data. Biodata: Yuchen Zhao is a research fellow at the Web and Internet Science Research Group (WAIS) in the school of Electronic and Computer Science (ECS), the University of Southampton. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from University of St Andrews in 2017. His research aims to understand and address the issues in human data interaction. His previous research focused on understanding privacy issues in personal data and designing agencies to help people solve those issues. His recent research has expanded to apply data visualisations and narrative visualisations to provide better insights, transparency, and engagement in public data