Seminar: Human-Data Interactions

Thursday, May 9th 12:30 -13:30 @Taşkışla 102b

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Selim Balcisoy (Sabancı University Behavioral Analytics and Visualization Lab) gave a presentation titled “Human-Data Interactions” as part of the Architectural Design Computing Program Lunch Seminar Series.

Abstract: Just as infants’ innate instinct to ask caregivers about the surroundings, people learn more the data, not only touching and seeing it, but also with the help of a subject that has knowledge about the data. While this subject may be a human being, it can be a computer too. With current developments, computers are increasingly taking the role of assistants in our daily lives (e.g. Siri, Alexa, Cortana). Such assistant with domain knowledge is beneficial in collaborative analytical processes, as well. During these processes the assistant can answer the questions asked by the participants regarding the data, it can also support/reject their idea by giving an explanation after understanding their conversation. Moreover, it can be crucial in preserving the productivity and efficiency of the meeting, by making sure the participants do not deviate from the meeting goal.
In this work, we aimed to create a system that both visualizes the data on a multi-display setup and also assists the meeting participants during the analytical process. Participants using the platform interact with the data by touching a table and also communicate with an assistive analytical agent over speech and display wall. In this way, they can understand the data in more detail and obtain analytical results faster.