At An Event Apart in Atlanta GA 2014, Sarah Parmenter shared how she's come to embrace using data in her design process. Here's my notes from her talk Designing Using Data:
- Instincts are experiments, data is our proof. We're no longer artists of the Web, we're systems developers.
- We can't rely on design providing the wow factor. Too many designs just fit into a existing cookie-cutter solutions.
- Data driven design is relatively easy to pick up and integrate into your work.
- People often make design decisions for the wrong reasons. Data gives you a way to better frame your arguments and help help make more effective decisions.
- Being able to incorporate data in your designs, makes you more valuable.
- Why haven't we been designing with data? Some of us might assume it's not part of our jobs. But understanding why is a critical part of what we do.
- Research is applied curiosity.
- Some data is better than nothing at all. You can use really quick tools or methods to gather insights.
- MailChimp uses Evernote to organize all their research and make it quickly accessible through search.
- What can you do to make sure "no one has an excuse to make un-informed decisions"?
- We often have to start with intuition to decide what to test and learn about. Once you get data, you can iterate.
- AirBnB found that professional photography allowed their listing to convert 2-3 times higher. They started with an instinct that better photos would help, then measured the impact.
- Vanity metrics are measures that make you feel good, but don't really matter to the bottom line. Hits, total sign-ups, etc aren't very useful.
- Making your metrics go up is pointless unless your metrics are tied directly to why you go into work in the morning.
- Personas provide an understanding of your customers. Every time you skip creating personas on a project, you ultimately regret it.
- Guerrilla audience testing: run some ads on Facebook to test your hypothesis of personas.
- There is data lurking everywhere -ripe for picking up.
- Include a call to action in your marketing -make it easy to act because people overall are lazy.
- People who visit your site from one referrer are likely to come from that source again. This is called referrer loyalty.
- Half the views on Facebook posts come within the first 30 minutes. Look at your analytics to determine when to post.
- What data can you use to inform call to actions? Test various language and design treatments.
- Visual media really changes the perception of value and brand.
- Look for patterns in your data. Some campaigns take a while to convert.
- Be iterative in your process. Use the data you collect to run further experiments.
- Communicate your findings in your client's language. If they can't relate to the findings, they won't act on them.