Mike Oren, Head of Design Research at Klaviyo, joins today’s episode to discuss how we do UX research for data products—and why qualitative research matters. Mike and I recently met in Lou Rosenfeld’s Quant vs. Qual group, which is for people interested in both qualitative and quantitative methods for conducting user research. Mike goes into the details on how Klaviyo and his teams are identifying what customers need through research, how they use data to get to that point, what data scientists and non-UX professionals need to know about conducting UX research, and some tips for getting started quickly. He also explains how Klaviyo’s data scientists—not just the UX team—are directly involved in talking to users to develop an understanding of their problem space.

Klaviyo is a communications platform that allows customers to personalize email and text messages powered by data. In this episode, Mike talks about how to ask research questions to get at what customers actually need. Mikes also offers some excellent “getting started” techniques for conducting interviews (qualitative research), the kinds of things to be aware of and avoid when interviewing users, and some examples of the types of findings you might learn. He also gives us some examples of how these research insights become features or solutions in the product, and how they interpret whether their design choices are actually useful and usable once a customer interacts with them. I really enjoyed Mike’s take on designing data-driven solutions, his ideas on data literacy (for both designers, and users), and hearing about the types of dinner conversations he has with his wife who is an economist ;-) . Check out our conversation for Mike’s take on the relevance of research for data products and user experience.

In this episode, we cover:

Using “small data” such as qualitative user feedback to improve UX and data products—and the #1 way qualitative data beats quantitative data (01:45)
Mike explains what Klaviyo is, and gives an example of how they use qualitative information to inform the design of this communications product (03:38)
Mike discusses Klaviyo data scientists doing research and their methods for conducting research with their customers (09:45)
Mike’s tips on what to avoid when you’re conducting research so you get objective, useful feedback on your data product (12:45)
Why dashboards are Mike’s pet peeve (17:45)
Mike’s thoughts about data illiteracy, how much design needs to accommodate it, and how design can help with it (22:36)
How Mike conveys the research to other teams that help mitigate risk (32:00)
Life with an economist! (36:00)
What the UX and design community needs to know about data (38:30)

Quotes from Today’s Episode

“I actually tell my team never to do any qualitative research around preferences…Preferences are usually something that you’re not going to get a reliable enough sample from if you’re just getting it qualitatively, just because preferences do tend to vary a lot from individual to individual; there’s lots of other factors. ”- Mike (@mikeoren) (03:05)
“[Discussing a product design choice influenced by research findings]: Three options gave [the customers a] feeling of more control. In terms of what actual options they wanted, two options was really the most practical, but the thing was that we weren’t really answering the main question that they had, which was what was going to happen with their data if they restarted the test with a new algorithm that was being used. That was something that we wouldn’t have been able to identify if we were only looking at the quantitative data if we were only serving them; we had to get them to voice through their concerns about it.” - Mike (@mikeoren) (07:00)
“When people create dashboards, they stick everything on there. If a stakeholder within the organization asked for a piece of data, that goes on the dashboard. If one time a piece of information was needed with other pieces of information that are already on the dashboard, that now gets added to the dashboard. And so you end up with dashboards that just have all these different things on them…you no longer have a clear line of signal.” - Mike (@mikeoren) (17:50)
“Part of the experience we need to talk about when we talk about experiencing data is that the experience can happen in more additional vehicles besides a dashboard: A text message, an email notification, there’s other ways to experience the effects of good, intelligent data product work. Pushing the right information at the right time instead of all the information all the time.” - Brian (@rhythmspice) (20:00)
“[Data illiteracy is] everyone’s problem. Depending upon what type of data we’re talking about, and what that product is doing, if an organization is truly trying to make data-driven decisions, but then they haven’t trained their leaders to understand the data in the right way, then they’re not actually making data-driven decisions; they’re really making instinctual decisions, or they’re pretending that they’re using the data.” - Mike (@mikeoren)(23:50)
“Sometimes statistical significance doesn’t matter to your end-users. More often than not organizations aren’t looking for 95% significance. Usually, 80% is actually good enough for most business decisions. Depending upon the cost of getting a high level of confidence, they might not even really value that additional 15% significance.” - Mike (@mikeoren) (31:06)
“In order to effectively make software easier for people to use, to make it useful to people, [designers have] to learn a minimum amount about that medium in order to start crafting those different pieces of the experience that we’re preparing to provide value to people. We’re running into the same thing with data applications where it’s not enough to just know that numbers exist and those are a thing, or to know some graphic primitives of line charts, bar charts, et cetera. As a designer, we have to understand that medium well enough that we can have a conversation with our partners on the data science team.” - Mike (@mikeoren) (39:30)