Change does not happen in straight line. And we do a disservice when we thinking about “data driven decisions” as a simple sequence of events:
gather data —> do analysis —> find insights —> present insights —> action
Let’s take a few examples from outside the world of analytics:
1. In 1969, a community of Native Americans protested on the island of Alcatraz in the San Francisco bay. For 19 months, they occupied the island, demanding the return of the land. In the end, the protest fizzled and their demands were reject. However, their efforts were not ultimately without change. In the following years, President Nixon signed a series of bill to give back millions of acres of land to Native Americans and provide support for their communities.
2. Marketing professionals have had to embraced the messy, complex reality of multi-channel and multi-touch marketing. It recognizes that purchasing decisions aren’t a one-and-done conversion event. In fact, it can take 8 or 15 touches of a consumer to get to a purchase decision. That makes marketing more like a series of nudges than a single convincing argument.
Action comes about through a circuitous route.
Analytics professionals need to internalize this same lesson. It can change how you think about your role:
* Persistence in sharing your message > Perfection of message
* Many insightful nudges > A single comprehensive presentation
* Building relationships with your audience > Unassailable logic
Data Insights, The Next Step in the Last Mile of Analytics
The “Last Mile of Analytics” is riddled with potholes. It is a surprisingly challenging journey to go from data analysis to influencing and changing minds. One of the biggest of potholes on this journey is the available attention of your audience. We hear the same things over and over:
My audience won’t open the report that I sent, even though I worked hard to make it easy to read.
My customers don’t take the time to sign in to our analytics tool.
I have many audiences with many different ways they want to see the data. Some want all the details; others just want to be told what is most important.
This common feedback points to a common problem: How do you deliver data in ways that people will consume it? It needs to be palatable and customized to the recipient’s desired form.
Burger King gets this with their taglines over the years:
“Burger King, where you're the boss!”
“Your Way”
“When you have it your way, it just tastes better.”
Now: “You Rule”
This was the challenge we have been considering at Juice. It isn’t enough to have a world-class platform for data storytelling. You need to reach your audience in the way they want to consume data. The more we spoke to customers, the more we heard the same thing: many people just want (1) insights or highlights delivered through (2) the channels of communication they already use.
We needed to design a fresh way to capture, annotate, and share insights so that the ultimate consumer of data got it “their way”. I’m delighted to share what we have cooked up in Juicebox.
Capturing Insights Needs to be Fun and Seamless
We wanted the capturing of insights to be an irresistible and persistent “easy button” so that the moment you had an “ah-ha!” moment, you could grab it.
In Juicebox, the capture insight button is available on all the visualizations and instantly snapshots your insight.
Insight Curators Need to Add Their Perspective
Context is King (sorry, Burger King). The person who finds an insight understands what intrigued them and often has important knowledge to overlay on the data.
In Juicebox, we provide a variety of annotation tools for pointing with arrows, scribbling, adding labels, and framing the important parts. We want people to drop their knowledge over the data visualizations like melty American cheese on a sizzling burger.
Sharing Needs to be Frictionless, and Where the Conversation Exists
Insights need to be sharable in the forms and channels where people are already having their conversations.
In Juicebox, these insights can be pasted into Slack or Teams, dropped into an email, or added to a PowerPoint presentation.
Next Up: More Capabilities for Engagement and Self-Expression
For me, the exciting part is enabling more people to use data as a way to communicate and express their expertise. Insight are about taking those special “ah-ha!” moments that we relish in our data analysis and enabling you to deliver that same bit of brilliant excitement to your audience. We have some fun ideas for helping you grab attention and draw your audience into the discussion about data.
Give it a try by scheduling a demo or requesting trial access.
More from the Juice blog
The Delight of Data Insight
You know that moment when you uncover something refreshingly new in data?
It is that “wow” or “aha!” when the obvious emerges from confusion, when a messy world gives way to clarity.
These moments are not dissimilar from the flashes of insight we enjoy from stand-up comics. Check out the following short video from Bill Burr on the Conan show. In about two minutes, he drops (by my count) six comic insights that reframe how you might think about Lance Armstrong.
These delightful moments of data insight are the sweet reward in the analytics world. Whether you are a researcher, consultant, data analyst, or part-time Excel jockey, there is joy in finding something that everyone else has missed, or seeing a way to break down long-held assumptions with a new way of looking at a situation.
This is an important part of the ‘The Last Mile of Data’. For years, we’ve focused on visualizing data, creating focused, actionable data products, teaching data fluency skills, and telling data stories. But capturing, sharing, and curating data insights is the last (perhaps latest?) step in bridging the gap between data analysis and the minds of decision-makers.
Those data nuggets need to be communicated and shared in a way that your audience will latch on to them. In the video above, Bill Burr seems like he is just riffing on an idea. It is hardly so simple. He works hard on his act — from the phrasing to the segues to the facial expressions — to encapsulate the insight in an easy-to-swallow lozenge that makes the medicine taste good. The listener is willing to re-consider preconceptions because of the packaging.
This is why the role of the data analyst is challenging far beyond the need to manipulating data. You are a sociologist, salesperson, psychologist, product manager, and now…stand-up comic.
Comics are weavers of a thread that connects what we think the world is to what it actually is.
The Last Mile of Data is about going the extra step that will carry your hard work to the point of action. Creating reports and dashboards that show data paves the path to insights. There is real satisfaction in the engineering of a well-crafted dashboard. You’ve created a kind-of data playground that may spawn insights.
But don’t stop before you get to the good stuff — the delight of data insight.
