Universal Principles of UX

56

Look at the data.

Once the ecosystem has been mapped (see Principle 55), it’s time to look at the existing data and cozy up to the client’s marketing department—the marketeers. Not all companies will have reliable data. That’s because reliable data requires a stable product that’s been in the market for at least a couple of years. Start-ups that have just released their first product, for example (besides not having a lot of extra money on hand to properly measure user behavior) will probably not have a stable enough user base to warrant investigation.

If we’re lucky, the company’s marketing department will have done a good job of keeping track of individual product performance and have data to look at. They’ll be able to tell us what has ...