Until You Gather Data, You Don’t Really Know

Braden Kowitz, Design Partner at Google Ventures, and his team work with nearly 300 companies, advising their design teams on how to work through some incredibly difficult design and user interface decisions. At a recent one of our Soapbox events, we asked Braden to shed some light on this process and asked if he could share a specific example of a design problem and the solution it yielded.

The first company that came to his mind was Blue Bottle Coffee. Blue Bottle Coffee was moving to sell coffee online, but the problem they encountered was figuring out how to best merchandise it. Analyzing the competition, they discovered that everyone merchandises their coffee based on region. Walk into just about any coffee shop chain and this is exactly how their coffee is organized. The problem is that this isn’t necessarily the best way to sell coffee. He asked our audience if they had been asked which kind of coffee they’d like based on region, for example, Columbian or Ethiopian. Almost everyone raised their hands. He then asked how many people were confident they were making a good choice when asked this kind of question. Only one person in our crowd of 150 responded with a “yes.”

“Sometimes you see other people using a solution and you think it is the right way to go, but until you gather data, you don’t really know.” — Braden Kowitz

Clearly, just because something is popular, doesn’t make it right. The best design decisions aren’t based on what has been done in the past, they are based on data. Braden and his team brainstormed several possible solutions, everything from making the website look like the physical stores to filtering the coffee options in various ways, but their best idea was asking people a different question altogether.

Instead of which region they would prefer, they asked shoppers “How do you make coffee at home?” After all, it’s a ritual almost everyone does and feels comfortable answering. This simple question was tested with shoppers along with a few fake brands to eliminate any bias. The data they collected with this new round of testing made it quickly apparent they had found the right direction.

“Doing something different than the way everyone else is, is a big risk, and you can’t do that without data.” — Braden Kowitz

It’s difficult and even risky to break from established practices, but data can help give designers the confidence they need to unshackle themselves from tradition and forge something new. And maybe even something better.

Braden went on to give insights on storytelling in design, building strong teams and why details matter. Listen to the podcast of our full conversation with Braden.

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