On 11/27/07, Robert Hoekman, Jr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Definitely falls under UX. So much can be learned about human behavior > from > stats, it's unreal. And stats don't lie, which is more than we can say > about > humans (even when these "lies" are unintentional).
This is *really* surprising to me... that you and Will believe analytics falls *under* UXP. It depends on *why* you're using analytics, I suppose, but if you're using it only for UXP purposes I don't think you're getting the full business value from the practice. There are many good business uses for analytics that fall outside the scope of UXP. For example, what about tracking the effectiveness of advertising? Of pay-per-click campaigns? Testing the messaging of one campaign against that of another? These situations, while they have UXP components, fall over the line into market research. I don't know about you guys, but market research is neither my area of interest nor expertise. Not to mention that the skills it takes to be an effective Web analyst are different than (though similar to) the skills it takes to be an effective UXP practitioner. Myself, I do primarily UXP but I also do analytics projects. And when I'm doing a straight-up analytics project, it's not always easy for me to take my UXP hat off (it never does, and it never should, come off completely) and get down to questions about aspects of the practice that aren't directly UXP-related. Here are some things analytics practitioners need to do: - Determine technical analytics requirements - Determine how other information systems will get integrated into the analytics solution (CRM data, product data, etc.) - Create RFIs and RFPs for vendors to determine the correct analytics solution for the given situation - Monitor and test the accuracy of an implementation - Address business issues that don't directly relate to UXP (e.g., keeping track of which products are selling best, the aforementioned market research tasks, etc.) I don't know about you guys, but I've got enough to do on a typical UXP project without all that junk thrown on top of it! There's another distinction as well that Katie addressed. Analytics doesn't answer the "why." UXP *can.* And this is why I constantly champion *strong collaboration* between UXP and analytics. They need to be separate practices due to their different focuses and different uses, but these separate practices do need to work very closely with one another because they provide value for one another. Analytics provides quantitative data for UXP to use, and UXP provides qualitative data to help give meaning to the quantitative. - Fred ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
