A Decade of Systems for Human Data Interaction

TL;DR

This paper reviews ten years of research on human-data interaction systems, emphasizing their unique challenges, co-design requirements, and potential to enable reliable, AI-driven applications.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive survey of a decade of lab work on HDI systems, highlighting their importance and the interplay between system design and user interfaces.

Findings

HDI systems require low latency, correctness, and consistency for usability.

Co-design of interfaces and systems is essential for effective HDI solutions.

HDI systems are foundational for reliable, interactive AI applications.

Abstract

Human-data interaction (HDI) presents fundamentally different challenges from traditional data management. HDI systems must meet latency, correctness, and consistency needs that stem from usability rather than query semantics; failing to meet these expectations breaks the user experience. Moreover, interfaces and systems are tightly coupled; neither can easily be optimized in isolation, and effective solutions demand their co-design. This dependence also presents a research opportunity: rather than adapt systems to interface demands, systems innovations and database theory can also inspire new interaction and visualization designs. We survey a decade of our lab's work that embraces this coupling and argue that HDI systems are the foundation for reliable, interactive, AI-driven applications.