One part of ‘Big’ in Big Data refers to the size of the
opportunity: it represents a new frontier for accelerated progress that will
leave few areas of human endeavor untouched.
The other part of ‘Big’ is the challenge. Beyond the digital
dexterity required to conquer unprecedented data complexity through modeling
and algorithms there’s a harder, human hurdle that must be surmounted for the
promise of Big Data to be realized: the physiological limits of a human’s
visual system to process input, whether data or information. Visual analysis of
data still dominates the business and scientific fields but we can’t handle the
visual complexity from Big Data. The
emergence of infographics and performance dashboards do little to overcome the
challenge.
‘Listen to the data’ may be a familiar refrain in business –
an appeal to be guided by numbers not subjective whim – but an emerging field
of scientific inquiry suggests taking this advice literally can generate breakthroughs
not possible through a sight-based approach. Sonification is the field of
turning data into sound. Multidimensional in nature, hearing presents a
different set of strengths from that of vision: the fidelity of time
sensitivity is 100 times greater for hearing than for sight.
This creates huge potential for marketing whose transformative
impact has yet to be explored. Imagine
the application of sonification to cross-channel customer journey assessment.
The ability to convert into sound and review customer-set level interaction
data across touchpoints and time can help identify meaningful moments along
with their contextual influencers, from changes in auditory patters.
Sounds promising.
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