A little chat with Big Data – interviewing Aare Puussaar

Who did you interview?

Aare Puussaar

What are they interested in and motivated by (research wise)?

We all know that Aare is all about the big data but it was really interesting to hear him explain where that love of big numbers comes from.

Aare has a technical background which has been applications-driven. He found the first two weeks of HCI, where we considered the use of ambiguity in design, to be the most challenging. He could appreciate how the projects being described were artworks but he found it hard to see how they could help with his development of big data tools. Aare admits that prior to engaging with this HCI module he had a tendency to think “I have to show the customer how this works and get them to use it properly”. Over the course of the module he has learned how different people can have diverse understandings of technology; “now I understand it’s about people seeing it differently and bringing different interpretations”. Aare says he now appreciates that if you want people to use what you have made then you need to know more about where they are coming from, what technology means to them and how they use it in their own life. He found the discussions during the Ubicomp sessions interesting because they made him realise that although for him Ubicomp felt like a reality this wasn’t the case for everyone.

Aare sees the potential for big data to empower people and he views educating people about their data trail as the first step towards this empowerment. Recently he has been reading about the open data movement. He believes ordinary people could make great use of some of the large open data sets that are available but they don’t know how to take advantage of this information. Consequently such data tends to be used by big companies with the resources to process it. He thinks there has been a tendency to collect data without due consideration of what it will be used for, which he summarises as a ‘tools first, democracy later’ approach. He would like to build tools with the public to help them reclaim their data, however, he has found it hard to understand how some of the participatory processes that we have been learning about would work in practice.

What would they like to find out more about for the rest of the module?

Aare is interested in how we can use the data provided by machine learning without losing what makes humans human. The question that drives him is ‘how can I present people’s data to them in a way that is meaningful to them, to help them improve their lives?’ As such, Aare would like to know more about public engagement with big data and how to involve the public in designing data tools and applications.

Identify two papers for Aare:

I have identified three papers for Aare, because I enjoyed researching this area so much:

• Towards a manifesto for the ‘public understanding of big data’. I’ve recommended this paper for Aare partly because I would like him to read some sociology! But also because it maps well onto our discussion of how the public understands big data issues and public understanding of science.
• I chose this paper on ‘Data in place’  because I thought Aare would appreciate the detailed description of how a community could come to see the value, and limitations, of big data.
• I chose this article on ‘Design and ethics in big data’ by Elizabeth Goodman because it really drew me into thinking about the issues behind the data.
• Also, as a break from reading, I thought Aare might enjoy listening to this recent radio programme from Radio Four about ‘the darker side of big data’….And he might like to look at the agenda for this forthcoming conference in Salford on ‘The Future of Big Data’. 

Identify someone interesting for them to chat to outside of Open Lab:

• I think Aare would enjoy talking to Alex Taylor, researcher in socio-cultural systems at Microsoft and one of the co-authors on the ‘Data in Place’ paper as listed above.