Instinct-Driven VS Data-Driven Design! Which one would you trust?
I believe that applying data in the design process is definitely not about replacing the things that designers or product owners do already, it's about helping them by offering another great approach to look at their mobile app users.
For example, One of the main reasons to bring data into your design/development process is so that you can begin to get a sense of how will your designs are performing. Another way to think of this is measuring how quickly you as a designer, are learning how to most effectively meet your users’ needs. It is important to point that the data will help you approach your design work with the mindset of trying to understand how your craft will impact user behavior rather than focusing on shipping a final product design and mark it as done.
But there are considerable justificable reasons to use data in the process of product/ service development or design:
First, if you have success metrics and OKR in your company, data can help to measure those, also can help the designers and and product owners to understand target users and behaviours
Second, Data can help your team and organization make decisions based on evidence not instinct!
Third, Data can help you counteract poor decisions that maybe the reflection of assumptions and narrow beliefs of HIPPOS (highest paid person’s opinion)
Forth, Data can help you build empathy with users, you always have the voice of consumers on your decision-making table
Fifth, Data will help you defend your design decisions and provides a concrete measure of the value that your design brings to your business
Sixth, Data will leverage you to become a better mobile UI/UX designer, it will help you to test your assumptions and contradict your instinct. It will help you to sharpen your understanding of how consumers behave, then you can make their lives easier and happier. With data you can follow consumer journey and optimise a better journey for them.
Data-driven appraoch lets designers confirm their intuition and their understanding about the users with the help of data, but I do believe it is a must since I have seen huge deviations between the instinct and the fact that data brings about, so let's not underestimate the numbers!
I strongly agree on this! Great write! Whenever possible, design (and for that matter, also content) should always be verified with data. However, it’s equally important to use/interpret the right data, or even to design the data right. For example, if users spend a lot of time on your website – something that very well could be a data point – it might be equally much a sign that they love spending time there (like browsing for inspiration or reading articles) as a sign that they hate spending time there (looking for, but not quickly finding, the right info or looking for manuals/customs support). And the design decisions also very different. From online journalism, I know that much data in the sense of ”what people click” points towards what could be described as ”nonsense”. Viral videos, short stupid stories and so on. But focusing too much on this hurts your brand/subscriber base/credibility in the long run. This is important to know, but maybe not the most straightforward data neither to obtain nor to digest/present. Thus, data-driven design is great, but combining it with the right designed data is crucial. 🙂