"The DATASOUND action started with the question ""Can sound be used for Data Science?"" and aimed at throwing light into how sound could be used in the context of modern data science, whether alone or as a complement to the ubiquitous visualisations. Despite humans having five senses available, we have limited ourselves to only use visualisation for exploration and communication of data in scientific contexts.
In this particular context of Data Science, our departing hypothesis was that an enhanced data understanding process (by means of employing additional senses) could lead to faster and more accurate findings and a more streamlined and natural communication of insights. As our society relies more and more on data, this becomes a crucial aspect prone to be optimized.
The application domain chosen for the project (one domain in which sound can help to better understand the underlying data) was that of continuous streams of data. And in particular, in monitoring applications, such as health or energy consumption. In those domains, attention is continuously required and a summary of the observations after a period is not very relevant. Because of this, we put forward to work with continuous time-series data, and particularly with energy consumption data.
The action has therefore seen work in three main lines of research:
a) Studying the use of sound to communicate information, including the cognitive aspects involved. In other words, can sound encode information that everyone can decode?
b) Developing tools to support alternative ways of presenting knowledge and data (including audiovisual content, but also large-scale visualisation).
c) Propose new ways of computationally represent energy consumption data, with the aim of better understanding and spotting the underlying patterns.
High-impact results have been generated for these three lines; not only by the scientific publications, but also by the participation in several outreach events with the larger society, and the development of an open-source software tool.
The action has also been instrumental for the fellow to extend his network of research collaborations, to lead a research group, and to ultimately secure another position in academia.
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