Data Science Across Disciplines

Session-08: DATA SCIENCE WORKSHOP - 1 (DESIGN THINKING IN DATA SCIENCE)

This week explores the question “Can we approach data science as a design problem?” and discusses how one can embrace a user-centred approach to design appropriate data science processes. We will do this through hands-on practical where we go through the data science process over an applied case.

The session will provide a brief and will enable you to follow on a scenario where you are expected to act as a data scientist team acting on a task that you will define. We will make references to some human centred design tools to help guide some of our thinking and discussions to guide the process.

Supportive Reading & Resources

• A good reference from Design Council on their human centred design process where bits of the methodology could frame approaching Data Science projects – https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/what-framework-innovation-design-councils-evolved-double-diamond
• IDEO’s The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design is a broader and detailed guide that can provide some additional methods to approach for the design of DS solutions: https://www.designkit.org/resources/1
• A light practical article titled “Integrating Personas in User-Centered ML Model Development”: https://towardsdatascience.com/integrating-personas-in-user-centered-ml-model-development-afb593741c49

Further resources

• An interesting project that looks into developing some basic templates to organise data science projects – https://drivendata.github.io/cookiecutter-data-science/
• And a further ethics checklist from the same team – https://deon.drivendata.org/ [Do you see any gaps/issues in their handling of this checklist?]