Human-Data Interaction: The Human Face of the Data-Driven Society

Abstract

The increasing generation and collection of personal data has created a complex ecosystem, often collaborative but sometimes combative, around companies and individuals engaging in the use of these data. We propose that the interactions between these agents warrants a new topic of study: Human-Data Interaction (HDI). In this paper we discuss how HDI sits at the intersection of various disciplines, including computer science, statistics, sociology, psychology and behavioural economics. We expose the challenges that HDI raises, organised into three core themes of legibility, agency and negotiability, and we present the HDI agenda to open up a dialogue amongst interested parties in the personal and big data ecosystems.

Explicating the Challenges of Providing Novel Media Experiences Driven by User Personal Data

“…Previous research like Human Data Interaction [32] provides theoretical frameworks that support such interactions, through the recommendation of application of principles like data legibility, negotiability and agency. But, there is still the call for practical solutions and design recommendations that could be used in everyday contexts.…”

“…Lanier [25] had mentioned an asymmetry of control in the digital economy where the users, who are both the producers and consumers of the data commodity, exercise very little control over it. While research has highlighted the importance of allowing data legibility, negotiability and agency through control [32] to the users, there still remains an explicit call for the technological embodiment of these principles. Users are continued to be presented with incomprehensible privacy statements [31,37], followed by acceptance statements where the users are constrained to binary choices [45] dictated by service providers often leading to low levels of understanding and very little space to exercise control [43].…”

Industry Ideals Barriers in Using Alternative Privacy Policies

“…This was followed by a more focused discussion about privacy policies. Due to the contrast between the diverse nature of the participants' backgrounds and the focused nature of the intended discussions, the facilitator used a general overarching text based privacy policy used by our organisation as a probe (Gaver 2001;Hemmings et al 2002) and used the principles of Human Data Interaction (Mortier et al 2013) (legibility, negotiability and agency) as a framework to guide the discussions. During the course of the workshop, the three principles were revealed to the group and they were asked to discuss their understanding of the principle and the best practices that could make the principle practical for their privacy policy.…”

Quantified Bodies in the Checking Loop: Analyzing the Choreographies of Biomonitoring and Generating Big Data

“…When a society is becoming data-driven (Pentland, 2013), it is important to make distinctions regarding how personal data are created. Observed data, such as online shopping behavior, are inferred and created from information about individuals collected by programs (Mortier, Haddadi, Henderson, McAuley & Crowcroft, 2015;World Economic Forum, 2011). Data can be intentionally created by individuals through online social network profiles, which is a process called volunteered data.…”