The next wave: Humanising data access

While several Internet and social media companies speak about big data and its value in understanding end users, it may not amount to much if the parameters applied to it are not effective enough, according to a leading researcher.

“The biggest misconception is that big data by itself brings more benefits (to Internet-based companies). But the reality is that it is beneficial only if analysis is proper and done in conjunction with human-oriented processes,” said Yahoo!’s senior research scientist Dr Alejandro James.

“On the one hand, there are the quantitative things like (applying) social and cognitive theories, while on the other, there are more qualitative things like ethnographic studies and cultural impact on technology, etc. Together, these elements help us make better sense of user requirements and how best to engage them and enhance user experience across all products like search and email,” James, who is in Bangalore from Barcelona to take part in Yahoo!’s Winter School for students, said. James’s 13-member team in Barcelona is involved in data analysis, providing metrics and statistics, analysing Web products and its impact on users and IP creation, among other things, while also publishing many of their studies on technology.

“Big data by itself doesn’t give much actionable information, especially cultural. Culture plays a big role in designing things. In Latin languages, people read from left to right/top to bottom. This has an impact at a macro level: like the movement of the eye and how it would probably catch the top right when you read things from left to right,” he said, adding that Internet companies are now starting to pay closer attention to culture and invest on interdisciplinary research teams who would come up with better insights on their user data.

He said such researches should focus on “human-centric computing”, in order for the sites to lure and retain larger number of users. “The focus is human to the point that we think about the impact and not about the users,” he said.

Asked whether cultural insights and human-centric computing would enable big Internet companies boasting of large user bases like Facebook to cash in, James said: “The first thing is to keep the users happy about their experience. Monetisation comes later.”