I have had few experiences already with software, or a hardware that I tried to use, but stopped after few moments of interacting with it. Main reason has always been “not knowing how to use”. When something is not working easily, I usually give up using it. I am one of those, yes.
Data products, such as reports or data analysis, require more cognitive load to understand and use. Main purpose of using data products is to extract insights from them and apply to optimize the business processes. Certain visual representation of a specific metric over a dimension can ease the understanding, but in a report where multiple metrics and views are presented can become complex.
The data products have to be made available on a platform. There are many platform as a service products out there, such as PowerBI, Tableau, Looker, Databricks, HEX, and so on. Each has their specific feature that makes them superior to their competitor. But that’s not the thing I want to focus on. Each of those software have their user interface and user experience.
For example, PowerBI requires you to register using your e-mail and phone number (don’t ask me why) and then use the desktop app on Windows or the Power BI Service as a webapp. Each has its own components. Workspaces, reports, dashboards, datasets, dataflow, datamarts, etc. are already quite a large selection of elements for developers. What’s more significant though is the user interface towards the dashboard consumers. It offers a lot of features such as saving your view as bookmark, subscribing to a report and receiving a snapshot as an attachment each day, analyzing the reports’ underlying data in excel, adding a live view to your Powerpoint presentation, and so on.
In order to roll out a successful data product, it is also important to roll out enablement as part of its UX. Enablement helps to improve adoption rates. Moreover, enablement leads to users becoming more skilled and confident in using the product. A well-enabled team can foster a culture that values data-driven decision-making.