Making A Start

29 November 2013

The first HDI workshop

The first Human-Data Interaction workshop (HDI 2013) was held at the Open Data Institute, London, UK on the 2nd October 2013, supported by EPSRC IT as a Utility Network+ and Horizon Digital Economy Research. Attended by around 40 participants drawn from academia and industry in the UK, Europe and the USA, following introductions and position statements, the workshop focused in on HDI with two break-out sessions and group presentations on the challenges and opportunities posed by research into personal data, and approaches to solve these challenges. Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt also delivered a talk on the importance of open-data to the success of research into human-data interaction and user engagement. Finally, the workshop concluded with a lively discussion about the need for HDI as a topic and whether we need yet another acronym and sub-discipline in computer science.

In the end the consensus seemed to be that the framing of the topic as a dialogue between humans and data was useful: it helps to emphasise the relevance of the topic to those in less technical domains, and thus the need for an inter-disciplinary dialogue around these matters. A joint report on the workshop is planned, which will present and establish the key outcomes and elements of this events and new research interest group. Watch the site for updates!

Following the workshop, as well as (obviously!) setting up this website, we’ve also setup a mailing list to help disseminate relevant information. Please do join if you’d like to be informed of future events and get involved in research and networking discussions.