Data-driven Business Intelligence Support

Data analysis and visualization is playing an increasingly important role in business decision-making. This project aims to provide a computational tool, including automatic information extraction, summarization and visualization to support business judgement. We consider both technological aspects and human aspects to provide reliable and user-friendly interaction. We will study text analysis in Natural Language Processing (NLP), the model of stakeholders (companies, designers, users) in Human-Computer Interaction.

Oppotunities and Challenges

Algorithms can reveal underlying patterns of customers’ demograpics, accustoms and behaviors free of subjective bias. Visulization techniques can deliver rich and instant computational results for growing new knowledge of the market. However, designing these computational supports for daily business activities is very challenging. Business decision-making involves perhaps the most complicated forms of intelligence e.g., holistic understanding, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking and problem solving. Apart from effectiveness and ease-of-use of the computational tools, bridging psycological and cognitive gaps between traditional sense-making and computer-aided decision-making require to be examined in practical usage.

Overview

The project includes NLP and HCI practice:

• Survey: Understand user needs and requirements, define problems to be solved
• Design: Define Aim, Method, Plan, and Limitation to solve problems
• Research: Investigate technical solutions to problems, design system prototypes
• Implementation and Evaluation: work our system to meet practical user requirements, system and user evaluation study
• Summary: Analyse own design activity, iterations and looking-back

Example

Here is an example of design decision report that help identify new features of a product to attract more customers.

The details of this project can be found at IABC Lab website