Guts vs. Graphs: Design in a Data-driven World
Everywhere you look, businesses are touting the benefits of another design process or championing another design concept, and data-driven design is among the frontrunners in this craze. But is it all that different from the design processes we already have? What makes it so special? It’s a worthwhile question. After years of being mistreated, misunderstood, and misrepresented, design and all its variant components are finally getting a moment in the sun. Questioning which components we champion — and why — is crucial to ensuring that the momentum of the design moment isn’t lost, and that design gets a permanent seat at the table. So before we can defend, support, champion, or foster data-driven design in our workplaces, we need a clear understanding of what we’re talking about.
As is often the case with emerging concepts in the digital sphere, data-driven design doesn’t have a clear, agreed upon definition. But with data-driven design, it’s not an industry-only source of confusion. People hear the word “data” and their brains, for better or worse, move to Business with a capital B. In some respects, this is good. It means when we need to get clients on board with the design process, stakeholders are more receptive. If data is involved, it’s often assumed that designs will be more reliable, offer a better ROI, and generally be a better guarantee of a “sure thing”. But it’s also not good. Data-driven design is an approach to design, not to data. The expectation of data as the silver bullet is not only unrealistic, it’s detrimental. Design isn’t a cut-and-dry process. Good design — innovative, exciting, engaging design — is messy. It’s not a science, it’s not perfect, and most importantly, it shouldn’t be. And while none of this gives us a clear answer for what it is, understanding the perception of data-driven design helps us to understand it at least a part of it. So, for our purposes, we’ll use Remy Rey de Barros’ definition of data-driven design: “[I]n essence it is basing design decisions on actual data (qualitative and quantitative).” Data-Driven Design Goes MainstreamWhy is this so important now, especially for those of us in enterprise spaces? Partly, it’s down to design thinking. As design thinking gains prominence and moves into more and more corporate spaces, enterprise is taking notice of design more generally. You can’t mention design in the corporate space and not see this valuation index, for instance:
But it’s also partly down to the particular technological moment we’re in: new technology allows us to collect more and more data to be used in decision-making. Big companies, with their broad customer bases and greater resources to draw from, are in the best position to collect that data. Combine these two factors and it makes sense that a shift to data-driven design would emerge, especially in corporate environments. But that doesn’t solve for howwe should be using data and a data-driven design approach in our work. Data-driven Over Intuition?Proponents of data-driven design will tell you that backing up your choices with data is the only sensible way to design. Why wouldn’t you use hard facts to help you decide what to build and how to build it? Why trust a hunch when the data will tell you what’s what? What could be better than taking the data your users provide as gospel and using it in your designs? That may all sound good, but as Remy Rey de Barros says, “Data can inspire and inform, but it can never drive something innovative, it can make the product great, but more is needed to make it awesome.
