The area of design includes expertise in human machine interaction as it appears at the points of both consuming data and producing data products.
Activities here include the representation and communication of human reality as data for the work of analytics, e.g. in database design, the curation of data, and of complex data and analytical results to humans to drive decision-making and influence behavior. It also includes the making of things, with purpose (i.e. to solve problems) and intent (meaning, concision, focus). A key part of the area is the broad practice of what is often called visualization, the translation of complex quantitative information into visual (and other sensory) forms that humans understand. In slightly more technical terms, the area of design focuses on what Zuboff called “informating,” the process by which the world is represented for computation and analytics, and also by which analytical models and results are represented to the world. These two processes often produce competing representations — a private one of the world for the data scientist, and a public one for the world of the results of analytics. One task of this area is to reconcile these two representations.
- Key tensions: discovery vs product, user-facing vs analyst-facing.
- Common theme: communication.
- Realm: abstract humanity.
- Keywords: communication, design thinking, representation, use interface, communication, visualization, visual and object languages, informatics, ontology, curation, HCI, informating, data product design, data discovery.
- Values: openness, authenticity, beauty, form and function.
Subareas and Courses
- Forms of Data
- Data Product Design
- Data Discovery
- Data Curation
- Visualization and Communication
- Human-Centered AI
- Thinking through making / Making through thinking
- FAIR ecosystems
- Data sharing