Augmenting UX with Data

Big Data has made it cheaper to keep information than delete it.

But what is its value to the user experience?

Jim reviews what data can be collected and how useful it can be to improve customer response and satisfaction. How we can benefit from Big Data analytics. He argues that it’s hard to do good research on users. People often lie in surveys to make the interviewer happy and only combining qualitative with quantitative data can reveal the truth about the users or markets.

“All models are wrong, some models are useful.”

The role of the data analyst

This sea of information is not yet bringing any value to people who own it. The role of a data analyst is to interpret the data and come up with specific insights. Sterne sees a big gap between a data analyst and “insight consumer”, who expects very clear results of this interpretation. All we can do is build approximate models of reality based on the data and in result form some opinions. The process is hard as there are complex tools involved. There was no time to dig deeper into the subject, but I really enjoyed this introductory talk.

If you want to understand how insights can be gleaned from user data rather than just user feedback, you’ll find this session provides a framework for thinking about data that is creative rather than calculated.