Brian T. O’Neill: Value Creation with BI Through Human-Centered Design
Does your data team understand the design techniques that will ensure adoption and improve company value? Without the right approach, your investment in BI can produce anemic results.
In this episode of the Expert Insights Series, hosted by BI Consultant Greg Brown, we feature Brian T. O’Neill of the company Designing for Analytics. Brian shares his deep experience in how to create value from data projects and the impact of human-centered design on business outcomes.
“Business is people. You can’t get to business value if you don’t first go through user adoption. Business value will follow if you design something indispensable. If not, you’re a cost center. You’re just spending money.”
Brian T. O’Neill, Designing for Analytics
Designing for Analytics
Brian T. O’Neill is founder and principal of Designing for Analytics, a consultancy that helps data leaders increase adoption of machine learning and other analytics solutions through human-centered design. Over 25 years, Brian has helped companies like Dell EMC, TripAdvisor, Fidelity, NetApp, Roche, and AbbVie improve adoption and impact through UX. He also hosts the popular five-star podcast Experiencing Data, where he interviews leading voices at the intersection of design, ML and AI, analytics, and data product management.
Watch the full interview on YouTube, listen to the podcast, or read the highlights below. The episode covers how to approach human-centered and outcome-focused design, how to get out of the way for great UX, and how to design solutions that fit the business user.
Human-Centered Design: Focusing on the User’s Needs and Outcome
“Nobody wants your dashboard. They want something downstream from that. They want the outcome, not the output.”
Brian T. O’Neill
Output vs. Outcome
Historically, BI projects have focused more on the reports to be produced than the business improvements to be realized. As a result, surprisingly few companies can consistently embed analysis, data, and evidence-based reasoning into their decision-making process. This disconnect stems from a myopic focus on outputs that misses the greater purpose of BI: equipping end-users in their pursuit of better outcomes. As Brian puts it, “We’re in the business of aiding decision-making.”
Design for Outcomes
Outcome-focused design targets the end-user’s actions in support of a broader business objective. Defining those objectives for a given user group is the right place to start, and teasing out the essence of those objectives is best done through questions. For example, if the desired outcome is increased revenue, ask your stakeholder: what is our current revenue, by how much do we want to increase it and by when, and what leading indicators most reliably correlate to that increase. As Brian says, “You do not want to find out how to keep score at the end of the game. It’s much more fun at the beginning.”
Focus on User Needs
Once you have defined the desired outcome, the timeframe, and the leading indicators, start designing your dashboard with the end-user in the leading role. Ask where the individual most influences the outcome and how their contribution is measured. Ask what their process is for getting to points of impact and which parts of that process create the most value. Ask what information they need to understand whether they are winning, why they are or are not winning, and what decisions and action steps will most improve outcomes. This line of questioning captures the essence of human-centered design: it puts the report writer in the shoes of the end-user.
User Experience Design: Getting Out of the Way
“When was the last time you thought about the interface on your phone’s calendar application? You’re not thinking about how the calendar interface works. It just works. That’s what we’re going for with user experience. You shouldn’t be noticing the design.”
Brian T. O’Neill
It is a common mistake to confuse UX with making things look nice. The goal of UX is to minimize the time and frustration a user spends getting to their goal. As Brian says, “Good data product design is about getting out of the way.” When the tool is seamless to operate, it becomes invisible and is much more likely to be adopted. Following the user’s natural process of awareness, analysis, and action helps minimize UX friction.
Subtraction Is Just as Important as Addition
For teams who want to improve at getting out of the way, Brian suggests that less is often more. Effective UX designers recognize that every element added to a screen increases cognitive load and should be chosen with care. When it comes to designing dashboards, if any element does not evoke a question, drive an action, or inform a decision, remove it. You have to be disciplined in this practice or you will quickly cross the threshold of diminishing returns where more crowds out results. Data visualization expert Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, in her book Storytelling with Data, put it simply: “Clutter is your enemy.”
Adoption Design: Using Exploratory Qualitative Analysis
“Business is people. You can’t get to business value if you don’t first go through user adoption. Business value will follow if you design something indispensable. If not, you’re a cost center. You’ve just spent money.”
Brian T. O’Neill
BI cannot create business value unless it shifts how your people view their area of the business and their influence over it. Adoption is the key, and if you are looking to improve the adoption of your BI tools, you need to talk to the people using them.
The Value of One-on-One Qualitative Analysis
Brian’s recommended method for discovering how end-users make decisions is the one-on-one qualitative analysis conversation. In a nutshell, data teams need to get good at asking questions and even better at listening. By gaining fluency in the language of the business, data teams are better positioned to translate business objectives into actionable data insights.
At Blue Margin, we have found that starting with wireframes before engineering a dashboard is the most expedient way to understand what users need and will adopt. Sketch out their data journey and walk through each element to determine which ones most improve users’ questions, decisions, and actions. When end-users are involved from the outset, when they have wrestled with their process and the insights needed to be effective in their work, they are much more likely to adopt the final product.
Connect with Brian and Designing for Analytics
Interested in connecting with Brian? You can find him on LinkedIn, through Designing for Analytics, or via his podcast Experiencing Data. If you would like to speak with Greg about your BI strategy, reach him at greg.brown@bluemargin.com.
About Blue Margin
Blue Margin helps PE and mid-market companies quickly convert data into automated dashboards, the most efficient way to create company-wide accountability to the growth plan. We call it The Dashboard Effect, the title of our book and podcast. If you would like to explore how our team can help you use data visibility to drive growth and team accountability, contact us here.
