Good ideas stick, but great ones take on a life of their own
About six years ago I was chatting with Anthony Deighton (our brilliant ex CTO) about what the next generation of QlikView should be like, and he said:
For some it might seem a little strange to align the notion that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities, to a BI and analytics platform. But for me that statement resonated deeply and felt like the most natural thing in the world.
As a UX person it immediately fitted in with my own views on accessibility and fair access to technology. I think for many in UX the idea of making the black boxes of technology, human, approachable and useful is the raison d’être. Hearing this statement that everyone should have access to and be able to use and benefit from our products further strengthened my belief that I’d joined the right company.
At the time Qlik’s mission statement was “simplifying decisions for everyone, everywhere”. And to hear Anthony talk about being egalitarian demonstrated that this was more that just marketing. We were putting our money where our mouth was.
Now this wasn’t a formal “product requirement”. It was more of an ideal, one that under the guidance of Donald Farmer quickly started to permeate how we defined the user experience. It helped us reframe our users, as more than expert creators and passive consumers — sadly still the prevalent model in most analytics software. It enabled us to think about the broad range of skills people have and how we could best support their needs and intentions. It helped us establish a people centric design practice, driven by user research and empathy. It also helped us with with practical design issues such as accessibility, usability and device agnostic thinking. It become something that permeated our thinking.
The UX design goals above are from 2012. They are about supporting this idea of access and usefulness for all or basically — what it takes to be egalitarian.
It’s an idea that has stuck with us so strongly that when we came to formally rewrite our design principles some 5 years later it appeared once again in the form of “don’t discriminate”. For me that’s living testament to how great an idea it is, and how important it is to us. Everyday we look hard at how we can create a more egalitarian experience. It’s at the heart of not only our design process but also how we innovate. It’s what makes us ‘people first’ and it is why we believe improving data literacy is just as important as creating tools that help people get more from their data.
Without a doubt Anthony Deighton had a huge impact on Qlik’s journey, but for me this simple idea — “it should be egalitarian”, is the thing I’ll remember most. Not only did it stick but it became part of our design culture, part of who we are — and for that I’m truly thankful.
