What is HAL?

The person, technology, and the interaction of the two. This is a broad framing of a research lab that is interdisciplinary by design and pragmatic in approach. The Human-centered Analytics Lab (HAL) combines disparate skillsets and foundational disciplines to solve problems – all seeking to better understand the human condition in the context of the digital life of persons. Co-directed with Ahmed Abbasi, the lab provides a framework for development of analytics methods and the use of analytics methods for substantive research.

See the HAL website for more information.

We regard analytics as the translational arm of more foundational areas of data science. Multiple fields usually isolated from one another are merged into an interdisciplinary mash-up of technology, psychology, methodology, and business. These areas often use different language, terms, and theoretical lenses to explore similar phenomena, which causes great confusion in many contexts. This interdisciplinary mash-up, though, is our playing field. The HAL lab sufficiently intersects these areas and has a way of looking at the world in a unique, and dare we say with a realistic, approach. We are “T-shaped” in structure: wide (horizontal) in foundational theories and deep (vertical) in methods. The HAL approach is one in which analytics have a purpose: problems are framed, critically considered, and evaluated with rigorous methods in an effort to understand the human condition. We find problems and then solutions; identify inputs and assess outputs; test stimuli on responses; identify causes and their effects; explain and predict.

Our work cuts across what would traditionally be part computer science, part statistics, part psychology. The intersection of these areas makes for research that is more interesting than most and unlikely to be done in other labs. Why? One reason is that the skillsets represented here are not usually combined for a common goal. Another reason is journal outlets in one area are generally siloed – it is difficult to navigate multiple outlets due, in part, to the language used but also the methods and framing of problems. Again, this is our playing field. We are not beholden to a rigid disciplinary framing of theory or method. Not only do we use methods, we develop methods, where our developments are done for a purpose. New questions in a changing world cannot always leverage existing methods, and thus the need to work on methods in the context of understanding the human condition.