Data as design material
Jonathan Follett writes on how as UX designers or researchers — we’ll be on the forefront of the movement to handle the coming flood of data — and make it not only available, but easy for people to use and understand.
One of our jobs as UX professionals is to provide context for all this data, making it easy for users to understand and interact with it. However, it’s rarely in our mandate to determine the types of data we’re delivering to our audience. This is usually the responsibility of the business side of the product development equation.
However, if we begin to consider data not as something that flows through our designs and even dictates their form, but instead as yet another design material, we can bring value in the sphere of content as well. As more and more data becomes digital–so rapidly, in fact, that we cannot possibly be aware of it all–and there are fewer technical hurdles to making it publicly available, creativity and insights that help UX professionals find the right data to incorporate and feature in their user experiences will become increasingly important.
