Human‐Centered Data Science: A New Paradigm for Industrial IoT

Few professions appear more at odds, at least on the surface, than ethnography and data science. The first deals in qualitative “truths,” gleaned by human researchers, based on careful, deep observation of only a small number of human subjects, typically. The latter deals in quantitative “truths,” mined through computer‐executed algorithms, based on vast swaths of anonymous data points. To the ethnographer, “truth” involves an understanding of how and why things are truly the way they are. To the data scientist, “truth” is more about designing algorithms that make guesses that are empirically correct a good portion of the time. Data science driven products, like those that Uptake builds, are most powerful and functional when they leverage the core strengths of both data science and ethnographic insights: what we call Human‐Centered Data Science. I will argue that data science, including the collection and manipulation of data, is a practice that is in many ways as human‐centered and subjective in nature as ethnographic‐based practices. I will explore the role of data, along with its generation, collection, and manipulation by data science and ethnographic practices embedded within organizations developing Industrial IOT software products (i.e. Department of Defense, rail, wind, manufacturing, mining, etc.).