3. People use information systems
to understand data and solve problems.
(Or at least try to…)
4. There are 3 fundamental questions that must
be answered by every information system:
1. What is happening now?
2.If there are problems, why?
3. What do I do next?
6. What is a KPI?
A KPI is a piece of information with the following attributes:
• Timely
• Relevant
• Directly answers a primary business question
7. Examples
KPI’s are usually in the form of
[some event or action] per [unit of time]
• New sales per day
• Phone minutes (used) per month
• Miles (travelled) per hour
8. If a metric doesn’t answer a primary business question,
it’s probably best utilized as context.
Context helps fill the gaps…
9. The 2 best ways to identify KPI’s
1. Interview your customers about which metrics matter most.
2. Take your best guess and let your users customize it!
10. If the KPI’s indicate a problem,
the user will want to know why it’s happening.
11. Use Context to explain Why
• The most common UX paradigm for this is to use “drilldown” pages.
• These pages usually exist one level below the main page in the IA.
• These pages should provide enough details to adequately explain and
define one of the main metrics, i.e. context.
17. Someone sprinted for 19.19 seconds.
• Data is just an abstraction of real events.
18. An athlete sprinted 200m in 19.19 seconds.
• A single data point is always connected to a series of other data points.
19. Usain Bolt sprinted 200m in 19.19 seconds and set a
new world record to become one of the world’s
greatest sprinters!
• Establishing effective context is about putting data points together to tell a
more effective story.
20. When you’ve shown people what’s happening,
and you’ve told a great story about why,
they want to know what to do next.
22. A compelling story leads to actionable insight.
• What you do with KPI’s and context, may lead to insight without doing
anything else.
• Otherwise, you will need to find ways to “spell it out”.
26. In general, the human
brain is conditioned to
look for patterns and
variations.
27. So an ideal information system should help the
user quickly identify patterns and variations.
28. Someone sprinted for 19.19 seconds.
• If you were trying to be a better sprinter, what insights can you gain here?
29. Usain Bolt sprinted 200m in 19.19 seconds and set a
new world record to become one of the world’s
greatest sprinters!
• How about now?
30. Study your customers’
behaviors and tendencies.
• Align the product to what people do in real life by studying what your
customers do and how they do it.
• Connect other related activities to drilldown screens where it makes sense,
to make the system feel “intuitive”.
•
A common thing people do is take data tables and graphs and put them into Excel
spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks.
31. In the end, the goal is to help
people analyze things.
32. So make sure the story you
tell is a masterpiece!