Designer’s Field Guide
The Analytic Workflow
How Play Produces Insight
A Standard Pattern
I’ve worked on many software analytics projects. Along the way I’ve watched a large number of people doing analytics, in different domains, using different software applications. What I’ve learned is that there is a single, instinctual analytic workflow that all people follow.
The Analytic Workflow looks like this:
Navigation is Iterative
The analytic workflow has a clear beginning, middle and end. However, the path through it is never direct. There are several different kinds of cycles that occur within the flow:
The best analytic experiences make it equally easy to navigate along the linear and circular paths.
Play Produces Insight
The play step is where the most time is spent and the most learning occurs. Play is the best word for this step because it conveys both experimentation and fun.
The first goal is to find patterns in the data. Once the patterns are found, the next goal is to understand how changes in the data change the patterns. The aha moment is precisely the instant when you prove to yourself that you know how to predict the effect of a change in the data.
You Do It to Share It
I’ve spent much of my career iterating and improvising around the analytic workflow. When I reflect on why this particular workflow has held my interest over the years I think it is because the narrative it tells is, well, kind of heroic. It is a story about an individual creating new knowledge for his community. It begins with someone who has a question and a passion to answer it, follows that individual through a personal experience of seeking and finding insight and closes with him triumphantly sharing what he has learned with others so that the community overall becomes wiser and more resilient.
While this may sound a bit overblown, I really have seen that kind of passion and intensity in the people I’ve watched using analytic tools and that kind of value in the outcome they have produced. The important design point here is that because the analytic workflow naturally progresses from the personal to the public it engages the issues of how people gain status in a community and build their reputation as a contributor. This in turn creates the opportunity and the responsibility for me, as the tool builder, to create something that doesn’t just solve problems but also becomes a trusted and dependable friend. That design problem has turned out to be an endlessly fascinating and rewarding place to spend my time.
