Designing Multi-Device Experiences

Chapter 7. Multi-Device Analytics

In this new space of multi-device experiences, it’s more important than ever to track and analyze user data. This is our way of seeing how people use multiple devices—and glimpsing how we can design better experiences. This chapter discusses new analytics questions and needs that should be addressed so that we can glean the insights that will help us build future-friendly ecosystem experiences.

User Data Is User Feedback

We all design products we believe people will need, love, and use, and we rely on different methods and information sources for our designs: market data analysis, UX research, best practices, industry standards, our own knowledge, pain points we identify, and our (informed) intuitive grasp of the product’s value. These are all important tools to get us going.

In order to build a sustainably engaging experience, make informed product decisions in the process, and assess our product’s success in a reliable way, we need data.

Data, data, and more data.

By data, I really mean feedback from our users to let us know what they do with the product and how it serves them. We need to know what makes them happy and what frustrates them, where they get engaged and where they lose interest, where they sail smoothly through the product flow and where they get stuck.

This feedback can come in two forms:

Words

What people tell us they did, do, or will do (and why). This feedback is typically qualitative in nature, providing us with a rich, in-depth understanding ...