If you’ve been around the design world for any length of time, chances are you’ve heard about data-driven design.
In a time when we have more data than we know what to do with, how can you harness all that information to improve your site?
Read on to find out.
What is data?
Before we dig in to how to use data to improve design, we need to understand what data really is. There’s more to it than just numbers, analytics, or figures.
Essentially, there are two types of data:
- Quantitative data is numerical data (such as analytics or statistics) that tells you things like how many visitors your site received, how long they stayed, and how they got there
- Qualitative data is non-numerical data that helps to tell you about the how or why of your users’ behavior
There’s a common misconception that quantitative data is more important or reliable than qualitative data. Sure, quantitative data is easier to gather and analyze (and numbers seem more ‘scientific’), but it’s essentially meaningless without qualitative data.
Think of it this way: programs like Google Analytics will provide you with huge amounts of quantitative data about user behavior, but they won’t tell you anything about why users do what they do, or how and why different user segments react differently to the same content.
That’s where qualitative data comes in: it provides some much-needed perspective.
Getting Good Data
All data is not created equal. To actually
do something with your data, it needs to be good quality.
So what is good quality data in this context? Empirical data.
Empirical data is data that’s been gathered through intentional and rigorous observation and experimentation.
The best empirical data sets out to answer a specific question or to address particular problem.
Aimless data collection that doesn’t focus on specifics is basically useless: it’s hard to sort through and even harder to turn into something productive.
Google Analytics expert Avinash Kaushik says it best: ‘All data in aggregate is crap.’
Putting that Data to Use: Data-Driven Design
Now that we’ve covered the ins-and-outs of data, we can get down to the original question: what is data driven design and what can you do with it?
Data-driven design doesn’t have one agreed upon definition. Generally though, it’s understood to be design that uses data – things like A/B tests, surveys and interviews, social media sentiment, site analytics, and usability test scores – to make better design decisions.
There are a few ways that data-driven design can help with design decision making, and overall work to improve sites:
1) It can help you make more informed design decisions.
The nice thing about using data to drive design is that it gives you more information about what works and what falls flat. Often in the design process, gut feelings and personal preference can take priority over rational design decision making.
If you’ve got both quantitative and qualitative data to back up your design choices, in theory the best decision should be obvious. The better the data you’ve collected, the better the decisions you can make (to a point).
2) It lets you track changes over time.
Whenever you make a change to your site’s design, you don’t want it to be a shot in the dark. Collecting data after you do something like changing a design feature will tell you whether the changes you’ve made are working, and it’ll help you understand better what your users respond to and what they don’t.
In theory, this should also help you out with the first point on this list – if you’ve been gathering data for a long time and tracking the changes you make, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions.
3) It can help you find problems and their solutions.
Pinpointing a problem area on your site is next to impossible without robust data. Maybe you’re not getting the conversions you thought you would, or your users are dropping off at some point on the customer journey – but you’ll never know exactly what’s going on until you have the data (both quantitative and qualitative) to tell you.
Data will also make finding a solution to that problem a whole lot easier.
First off, knowing specifically what is happening and why makes it possible to come up with solutions that are specific and targeted.
Second, once you’ve come up with a few solutions, you can use data to test out which solution best solves the problem, and go from there.
4) It’ll help you get to know your users better.
At the end of the day, connecting with your users and giving them a better experience should be the goal of your site. It’s what everything else, from sales to sign-ups, stems from, so getting to know your users should be a top priority.
Good data can tell you a lot about your users – their preferences, their behavior, their particular reactions to various pieces of site content – and help you to make design situations that suit them moving forward.
Major problems emerge when you design for who you think your users are, and not who they really are. And the only way to find out who they really are is to collect good quantitative and qualitative data.
Wrap Up (And The Catch…)
Data-driven design has a whole lot going for it, and good data can be a golden ticket to a better website.
But, as always, there are a few caveats.
We’re happy to sing the praises of data-driven design, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
Putting too much stock in data (especially mediocre data) can slow the design process down and block creative solutions.
If you need data to back up every little decision, you’ll never get anything done. And chances are, you’ll reject some brilliant design ideas outright because they don’t have the data to back them up.
Data isn’t magic: it can’t tell you everything you want to know, and data without smart interpretation and analysis is just a jumble of numbers.
But if you prioritize collecting great data and use it to make better design decisions, data-driven design is a good tool to have in the never-ending quest to improve your site.
