www.rebootdata.net/data-processing/
The intersection of psychology and computers is a crucial point for creativity and user-centered design in technology. It’s also a place where many unintentional injuries to people happen. That’s why we need psychologists to play a bigger role in tech development–particularly given that many technology companies change human behavior at scale and profit from behavioral changes, and generally embrace scientific innovation.
In the past the collection of data in psychological research was based on two primary methods: lab tests and surveys [1]. The former is a way to study a particular aspect in a controlled setting, while the latter examines more general behaviour using self-reporting questions or (potentially) structured interviews. Both have inherent limitations.
Computers, however, are able to process and analyze large quantities of information at high speed in ways that conventional methods cannot. This is why they are powerful tools for psychologists and opens up a completely new field of study. For example, a new field called Psycho(neuro)informatics is emerging that merges psychology and computer science to develop models of human brains and intelligence. This requires an expert team: psychologists with domain knowledge, and computer scientists with the knowledge to design large-scale tracking systems, and to manage and model the resulting data.
But until recent, there was hardly any collaboration between the fields. For instance, Google directors have been more likely to be interested in computer and computational science (29% did so) as opposed to psychology (less than two percent). This is likely to have led to psychologists being under-represented in leadership at tech companies–with a result that technology products tend not to take psychological aspects into consideration.