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Description of  User-centered Data Management

This lecture was initially intended to cover relevant issues in database user interfaces, mainly query interfaces. However, very soon the authors realized that providing friendly access to information is much more than just designing nice interfaces rather it has to do with designing interactive systems that suitably fit the users' tasks and this can be achieved by following a user-centered approach. Second, the data users want to access nowadays do not reside only in traditional databases they are mainly on the Web (either available or hidden--it does not matter). Third, the users do not limit themselves to just extract the data instead they want to manipulate them, analyze them, to make sense out of them. Thus, user-oriented systems should provide more functionality in addition to querying. Finally, while visual interfaces and information visualization techniques are usually considered the most usable approaches, categories of users and/or contexts exist for which they are not appropriate, so other interactive paradigms need to be explored. The content of this lecture reflects all the above considerations. Chapter 1 discusses the importance of adopting a user-centered approach. The work then, in chapter 2, takes the reader to the early days, where we find the initial use of visual interfaces to support database tasks. Visual representation, interaction, and perception are discussed. Chapter 3 moves on to describe non-traditional interfaces which are relevant to databases. It in particular looks at web data and mobile interfaces. Chapter 4 then sheds more light on two concepts behind database querying. The focus here is on information visualization and visual data mining. Chapter 5 closes by describing interfaces that go beyond the visual dimension. It in particular discusses accessibility and aural interfaces.