What UX needs in an era of big data and analytics

Kimberly Dunwoody
2 min readOct 24, 2019

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Google search for ‘analytics’ . Photo by Edho Pratama on Unsplash

Moving forward in user experience (UX) design for big data and analytics, UX leaders need to command a wide range of skills and expertise. Gartner coined the term “citizen analysts” referring to users of self-service data and analytic platforms being stood up at many companies to help them make better use of their data (1). Today’s UX leaders need to be “citizen analysts” and they need to also develop data translations skills. According to Nancy Duarte, data translation is the ability to extrapolate business meaning from data supplied by data scientist — essentially making data and analytic insight easy to use (2).

Furthermore, all members of the multidisciplinary UX team must also work to become data translators if they are to succeed in making data and analytics insight easy to use. As a UX leader, you must understand how to connect different skillsets on your team with not only the end user of the product but also the data scientists that create the insights. Leaders must encourage changes in UX practice to include:

Content Designers- Create taxonomies that bridge the language of the data scientist to that of the ultimate end user.

Researchers- Look for ways in which similar complex insight has been delivered and how well it was understood by the end user.

Visual Designers- Understand differences in how data scientists might visualize insight versus how the ultimate end user might visualize the same information.

Information Architect (IA)- Must be relentless in shaping a shared mental model of the underlying information space between the UX Team, the data scientist, and the end user. This is arguably a critical member of the big data UX Team. I will further explore the significance of the IA in an upcoming article.

Working together the data scientist and the UX team can accelerate the user’s ability to understand and act on data insights. Mckinsey goes further to connect the work of these multidisciplinary data translation teams to success in artificial intelligence (AI) (3). Think of the work that you do today as a UX leader to enable your team’s data translation abilities and laying the groundwork for your future success in AI.

1

https://uxplanet.org/how-to-design-big-data-ux-for-the-era-of-citizen-analysts-98625db0750d

2

https://fortune.com/2019/10/12/human-intelligence-data-translation/

3

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-analytics/our-insights/analytics-translator

Dr. Kimberly Dunwoody is a Design Practice Leader at IBM based in Denver. The proceeding article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies, or opinions.

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Kimberly Dunwoody
Kimberly Dunwoody

Written by Kimberly Dunwoody

Kimberly is a UX executive focused on customer-centric change-management and education. Twitter: @dr_dunwoody

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