We’re living in a world where our devices are tracking our every move. Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and countless other services are collecting crazy amounts of data on us. All this information is analyzed to uncover patterns of behavior so they and those they share their information with can better target us at every turn.
Many articles and books have been written that offer advice on how to improve an experience through design changes based on this big data. In fact an entire industry, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), has sprung up around the idea that big data can improve site performance. Can big data (quantitative data) alone be enough to realize the full potential of any experience? Can we forego in-person user research (qualitative data) now that we have so much data on WHAT users are doing? No.
Continue reading Big Data Only Tells Half the Story, If You’re Lucky.