Universal Principles of UX

57

Not everything that counts can be counted.

William Bruce Cameron’s 1963 text Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking contained the following passage: “It would be nice if all of the data which sociologists require could be enumerated because then we could run them through IBM machines and draw charts as the economists do. However, not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

When it comes to doing user research, there are two ways of going about it. On the one hand, there’s qualitative research that can’t be counted—like observing behavior through ethnographic studies and interviews—and on the other hand, there’s quantitative research—like surveys, A/B testing, and polls—that ...