Numbers don’t lie. They aren’t influenced by our baggage, hubris, or subconscious need to be right. It’s only natural then that data should be the defining point when it comes to collaborations among cross-functional teams.

Programmers, designers, and marketers each have the goal of enhancing the consumer brand experience, but use different modes and ideas about arriving at the finish line; hence, the business case for data-driven design.

Data-driven design must provide:

  • post-click engagement tracking
  • customer acquisition and retention strategies
  • interaction and trigger models

Know Thy Consumer

Data-driven design uses key touch points to engage consumers, to reinforce messages, and to prompt specific actions. Because of technology, design is no longer a 2D concept but a two-way instructional platform that enables user behavior analysis, including habits and responses to actionable triggers, and benchmarks of user expectations. With over 80% of purchase control in the hands of women, consider some key reference points:

  • 22% of women shop online at least once a day
  • 92% of women pass along information about deals, or finds, to others
  • 171: average number of contacts in women’s e-mail or mobile lists

When looking for a starting point for design models, brands should start here –with demonstrated understanding of female consumer behavior. The PixInk Womanifesto uses these trends to inform five key directives to brands in their approach to women: enchant her; give her more; make her do less; assume nothing; talk to her. Any design model that does not take these factors into account will alienate women and render the design less effective across the board.

Infographics: Making the Complex Simple

Deciding how and when to display information visually is a task that requires discretion. As Steve Rubel notes in his article, The Infographic Is Suddenly the Media Uzi of Choice:

“Far too often we make a doodle just because we can, rather than when we should. The result is that we inadvertently convey information in a visual format that would be just fine or even better in text”.

Female consumer behavior supports this theory. Women want brands to help them do less –that is to make things less complex. Brands that balance visual representations of data appropriately will move to the front of the line.

Data-driven Design at Work

Re.vu

Re.vu, an online visual resume application, is an example of how information can be displayed visually without becoming cumbersome. It provides a visual rendering of job history, tenure, and skill-sets in a timeline format and synchronizes with LinkedIn. Further, its interface uses detailed traffic analytics.

Facebook

It’s difficult to have a discussion about data-driven design without using Facebook as an iconic example. Facebook has mastered data-driven design with its use of interactive tools that trigger routine behavior; it boasts 800+ million users as proof. Facebook’s new platform, Timeline, combines the hallmarks of Facebook’s interface with increased visual functionality. Although Timeline is currently in development and although Facebook hasn’t officially made Timeline available to brands, the new interface should be exciting to brands nonetheless because Timeline provides a glimpse into what could possibly lie down the road for them as data-driven design continues to lead the way.

Crafting Positive Consumer Brand Experiences

Data-driven design has consumer behavior at its core. Because data is dynamic, it follows that design structures should be somewhat malleable. Social media has changed the way brands engage consumers and consumers expect a degree of personalization throughout their experiences with brands. For this reason the more relevant way to approach data-driven design is to include interactivity into the formula. As users manipulate the structure, they influence data and that data has more credibility because it based on specific user preferences. The end result is a heap of quality information that can be used to better understand target audiences and create user journeys that consistently hit (or exceed) the mark.