Data & Design: The modern debate
San Francisco Design Week is June 14–22 this year. HoneyBook will be hosting a panel discussion titled “Data Driven Design is Dead”. As a warm up, we’re providing a brief reading with various views on how data and design ought to interact.
If You Want to Be Creative, Don’t Be Data Driven
Bill Pardi
If you are a designer, engineer, or in any role that creates things, you probably hear a lot about “big data” and being “data driven.” The assumption is that data equals insight and direction. But does it? Data, any data, in any amount brings with it problems that make it very dangerous to rely on alone.
Drop and give me 100
Ben Gibbs
More and more clients have realised the importance good data can have on their business. We all love data driven solutions to drive direction and delivery don’t we? The great thing about data is it can help steer us to a decision or an outcome, but we should be careful that it doesn’t actually start steering us to the solution. Sometimes we just need to use gut, instinct and intuition to try things and to make mistakes. Scrawled on a wall by our studio’s resident retired stonemason was a quote by a clever chap (Albert Einstein) “Logic will get you from A-B. Imagination will take you everywhere”.
Instinct Isn’t Enough: Great Design Demands Data
Robert Hoekman Jr.
Executives live by the idea that data will help them understand, and predict, and plan. Data will help them see how decisions map to outcomes, and how outcomes can be influenced by this change or that.
For designers, data may seem like a non-issue. They’re for someone else to worry about. Our jobs are to care about people and design and to stand on a tightrope between the two. The executives are right.
Data informed design, not data-driven design
Neil Turner
You might have heard that data is now a big thing in business, especially BIG data (as opposed to small data — that’s just for wimps). Business folk simply can’t get enough of it. Data telling them what their customers are up to. Data telling them how their products and services are performing. Data telling them how ‘productive’ their employees are. Governments are now even using big data to help subtly influence the behaviour of their unsuspecting public. For example the British Government has a well published ‘Nudge unit’, or behavioural insights team to give them their official name, which in their words, “help people to make better choices for themselves” (and no doubt the Government).
The User Experience: Why Data — Not Just Design — Hits the Sweet Spot
Loretta Mahon Smith
The successful user experience is about meeting a consumer’s needs on an individual level — a “segment of one” not “one-size-fits” all, many experts say. But what does that look like in practice? “What really differentiates companies is their personalization through data — which allows them to build unique experiences that lead to increased engagement and better outcomes, …” write Scott A. Snyder, president and CSO of Mobiquity and a senior fellow at Wharton, and Jason Hreha, founder of Dopamine, a behavior design firm, in this opinion piece.
