Smart Data: A System for Generating Application-Agnostic Interactive Data

Interaction design focuses on the complex interaction between human and software. The cognitive part of interaction relies on the application features offered through the user interface and implemented by the underlying software. Data associated with this paradigm is application-dependent and has little value without it, a “stand-along-application data”. On the other hand, “stand-alone data” could be built as database table or other formal structures, allowing for “smart and scalable” communication using queries. However, the majority of valuable data is unstructured, heterogeneous documents of mixed contents (text, links, tables, graphics, audio, video, etc.). While great for human consumption, this approach is not scalable, resulting in information overload and anxiety; humans can comprehend limited amount of data. Tools focus solely on the syntax without comprehension and end up with many false hits, a “guesswork” at best. We propose a new Smart Data approach to create and disseminate data with both syntax and semantic contents built-in, allowing for smart and scalable interaction between humans and data regardless of the application used. We use HCI-patterns as a case study of adding smart layer to heterogeneous, rich data.