Data Analysis in UX Design

A prerequisite for a cross-functional product.

The design process for any project seems linear, but it is a complex structure built on a creative mindset. The most important asset a designer could ever have is anonymized user data, which is intangible.

A little knowledge of data analysis and data engineering is important in a designer's skill set. Though a designer is a creative analyst, a deeper insight into collated user data will reduce the rounds of modification in a typical design project.

Before I dive into the analysis of user data for design, it is necessary to know the sections in a design process where data are collated.

The most glaring section is the user research, where a designer interviews a potential user on the pain points and solutions they think will work best, the data generated here is mostly unstructured. The only caveat here is that analyzing this requires the designer to either jot or record the interview session, leading to the designer trivializing the importance of some data.

Card sorting is also an avenue to generate design data, but most of the data generated here mostly structured.

A/B testing is another prominent section where user interaction data is captured and stored. This helps improve the customer experience process before development.

If the data generated during the design process is quite large, Analyzing this data and generating meaningful insight requires some knowledge of data analysis. However you don't need to install a bunch of software to do that, there are a couple of resources that can be used for this. Some of them are:

Most design data is unstructured so all but Excel is a good fit.

For a lone designer or startup with fewer data to work with, this data will be leveraged for product updates and lifecycle.

Design is about Experiencing and experimenting is to make room for the unexpected.

Cheers.