David Huynh: “The user interface design must inform the back-end design”
13.05.2009
Linked Data is evolving fast. A huge amount of RDF data is available and ready for exciting new applications. Unfortunately, the bottleneck is still the availability of Semantic Web user front-ends which demonstrate the power of linked data. To a certain degree BBC Music beta is the first commercial platform which makes heavy use of linked data. With Parallax David Huynh has shown that one of the most interesting semantic web applications can be built around browse and search applications which offer tools for doing complex search queries. Andreas Blumauer from Semantic Web Company (SWC) talked with David Huynh, “Interaction Scientist” at Metaweb, the company which developed Freebase, an “open, shared database of the world’s knowledge”.
SWC: David, you have been working for MIT´s Simile Project and now for Metaweb Technologies - two “building blocks” of the Semantic Web. Could you tell us a bit about your ongoing work at Metaweb?
David: My official title at Metaweb is “Interaction Scientist,” and so my main focus is coming up with novel interaction designs for Metaweb’s platform and products, and prototyping them to some extent to evaluate their effectiveness. Parallax was one such prototype that has gathered much excitement within Metaweb and the Semantic Web community at large. And the Freebase query editor 2.0 shows my interaction designs at the other end of the spectrum - targeting developers rather than just end-users.
I’ve also learned that data-centric user interfaces and interaction designs can only be as good as the data allows them to. So I am also dedicating some of my time toward analyzing the data we have and improving its quality so that I can design even better interactions.