The document discusses how design thinking principles can be applied to enterprise business analytics to improve dashboards and reports by focusing on the user experience through techniques like empathy interviews, prototyping, and testing. It provides examples of how design thinking has helped capture requirements in new ways and rapidly deploy solutions. The document argues that using design thinking can drive better outcomes, employee engagement, and decision making.

1. Applications of Design Thinking in Enterprise Business Analytics
@GregBonnette #YourDashboardSucks1

2. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 2
 Investments made in BA technology that have
not been adopted
 Projects to deliver BA content that is not being
used
 IT: “The business doesn’t engage us.”
 Business: “IT doesn’t get our requirements.”

3. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 3
 How are other pockets of industry doing this
well?
 How do I remain relevant to my organization
and add value in my role?
 How do I apply these concepts with repeated
success in my organization?
 What if I’m not creative or artistic?

4. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 4

5. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 5

6. 6
Consumer Applications
Designed
Driven by Value, Usability
and Satisfaction
Customer or User-centric
Short Cycles – Minimum
Viable Product
Enterprise Applications
Developed
Driven by “Requirements”
Data-centric
Long Cycles – “Big Bang”
Why Your Dashboard Sucks

7. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 7
“We impose our design on
reality and declare that to
be reality.”
Frank Buytendijk

8. 8
User Needs
• Interface
• Interaction
• Aesthetics
Business
Goals
• Actions
• Vision
• Budget
Technology
• Functionality
• Feasibility
Why Your Dashboard Sucks
YOU are the
Designer
UX
It’s not just the UI

9. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 9
Business Action
Business Decision
Business Intelligence
“Amazon is in talks to lease 20 cargo
planes to build its own overnight air
operations”
“Creating a logistics service could
dramatically lower those costs.”
“Amazon’s shipping costs have been
skyrocketing. The company spent over
$8.7 billion on shipping in 2014, up from
$6.6 billion in 2013.”

10. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 10
Shanon Marks

11. Why Your Dashboard Sucks
Deployment
Development
Requirements
11
“I need a report that lists open
accounts in Southeast Ohio”
Create a tabular report listing all
open accounts in Southeast Ohio
BOOM! Delivered exactly
what you requested.

12. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 12
vs.

13. Why Your Dashboard Sucks
“Design thinking is about believing we can make a
difference, and having an intentional process in
order to get to new, relevant solutions that create
positive impact.”
13
IDEO

14. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 14
Empathize
• Develop a deep
understanding of
the problem
Define
• Clearly articulate the
problem you are
trying to solve
Ideate
• Brainstorm potential
solutions – select
and develop your
solution
Prototype
• Design a prototype
(or series of
prototypes) to test
all or part of your
solution
Test
• Engage a
continuous short
cycle innovation
process to
continually improve
your design

15. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 15
noun
the ability to understand and share the
feelings of another.

16. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 16
What is your role in the organization?
How is success measured for you and
your organization or department?
How do you know when things are
performing well? Poorly?
What specific questions about our
business are you trying to answer?
How does this matter to our business?
Why are we doing this?
What actions are taken as a result of this
analysis?
Cardinal Rule: No tech jargon around the business!

17. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 17
“Marketers need to know what
the most searched athlete
names are on the website in the
5 days leading up to an event so
they can better understand which
of the athletes are most
influential or popular among
different groups of fans”
Use Case (or User Story)Technical Requirement
The report should have the
following fields:
 Search Query String
Filter Criteria:
 Contains ‘Athlete Name’
 Date Between Event Date-5 and
Event Date

18. Why Your Dashboard Sucks
Read About It
Conversational
Become a Customer
One-Way Directed
Questions
Observational
Let the Customer
Join In
18
Credit: Grow Design Management

19. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 19
Identify Patterns from
Empathy Stage
Don’t Over Define,
Refine Over Time
Leverage
Clues
Preserve
ambiguity,
Leave room for
chance-discovery

20. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 20
What does he need?
• A Ladder or a Book?
• To be able to more easily
satisfy his thirst for
knowledge?
• More social time with his
parents?

21. 21
ALL
OF THE TIME
EVALUATE CORE
MOST
OF THE TIME
EVALUATE
SOME
OF THE TIME
VERY LITTLE
OF THE TIME
FEW
OF THE PEOPLE
SOME
OF THE
PEOPLE
MOST
OF THE
PEOPLE
ALL
OF THE
PEOPLE
Why Your Dashboard Sucks

22. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 22
“It’s not about coming up with the ‘right’ idea, it’s about generating the
broadest range of possibilities.”
 Brainstorms
 Sketching
 Mind Mapping
 Worst Idea
 Random Connections
…and 100’s more

23. 23
Vanity vs.
Actionable
Exploratory
vs. Reporting
Leading vs.
Lagging
Correlated
vs. Causal
Credit: Croll & Yoskovitz
Why Your Dashboard Sucks

24. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 24
Page
Views
Unique
Visits
Unique
Users
% of Daily
Active Users
Vanity Actionable

25. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 25
Trade W.O.R.N. requirements documents for hi-fi prototypes

26. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 26
Data Discovery Tools

27. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 27
“Prototype as if you know you’re right,
test as if you know you’re wrong”
Stanford d.School

28. 28
 Aesthetics
– Our application’s personality
– Establish trust in the content
– Add pleasure and drive repeat use
 Color, Typography, Iconography,
Branding, etc.
 Modern BI Tools Make this Easier
 Loyalty in enterprise business
analytics promotes a culture of
better decision making
Credit: http://alistapart.com/article/indefenseofeyecandy
Why Your Dashboard Sucks
Typography Matters

29. 29Why Your Dashboard Sucks
Credit: http://alistapart.com/article/indefenseofeyecandy

30. 30Why Your Dashboard Sucks

31. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 31
Data
Management
• Data
Warehousing
• Data
Preparation
• Data
Engineering
Business
Intelligence
• Dashboards
and
Reporting
Predictive
Analytics
• Statistical
Analysis
• Data Mining
& Machine
Learning
Prescriptive
Analytics
• Business
Process
Modeling
• Experiment
Design
• A/B Testing
Design Thinking

32. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 32
Business
Intelligence
Real World: Limited Customer Access Requires More Synthesis

33. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 33
Prescriptive
Analytics
Predictive
Analytics
Real World: Predictive Modeling for Deployment

34. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 34
Business
Intelligence
Data
Management
 $9B Hedge Fund Client Servicing Team
 Complex and Nuanced
– Business Model
– Data Model
– Self-Service Semantic Layer
 Two Week Sprint
– Solicited User Stories
– Prototyped Semantic Layer
– Rapid Test-Refine Cycle
– Informed New DW Modeling
– Deployed with Zero Training
Necessary

35. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 35
1. This requires a growth mindset to be successful
2. If you can focus on any one area – make it Empathy
3. Technology is closing aesthetic design and data
visualization gaps
4. In the enterprise – design thinking is a framework vs.
process
5. You are inherently creative
6. This drives employee satisfaction and engagement
across the board

36. Why Your Dashboard Sucks 36
 Extreme Dashboard Makeover Challenge (Ironside)
 Design Thinking: Get By with a Little Help from Empathy (Ironside)
 5 Steps to Effective Dashboard Design (Ironside)
 An Introduction to Design Thinking (Stanford d.School)
 Lean Analytics (Alistair Croll & Benjamin Yoskovitz)
 The Lean Startup (Eric Reis)
 Designing Data Driven User Interfaces (Erik Klimczak)
 Design Thinking for Innovation (UVA / Coursera)