From the course: Design Thinking: Data Intelligence

How design intelligence provides value

From the course: Design Thinking: Data Intelligence

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How design intelligence provides value

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- For a moment, imagine what it was like when we had little data, and therefore, could not offer much information to the people who used our products and services. Here's an example. Remember when an electronic device simply told us when it was about to run out of power? Sometimes we were told what percentage of battery was left, but that was it. Today, we're notified how many movies we can watch, or ways to save power and extend use. Did you catch the distinction between those? In the past, we were provided with very little helpful information, almost nothing about how much time was left or what we could expect from it, while today we receive clues to help us experience more from the product. Let's take a moment and take a deeper look at the evolution of these examples. When we have valuable data, we're able to make it more valuable by making some inferences. Simply put, an inference is a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning. This data enables us to design the use of these inferences in a way that can be communicated clearly to our customers. In this case, we estimated how much power was left, and then inferred what you may be able to do with it, for how long and how you might save power. To make the value even clearer, what if we had simply displayed all the raw data, like let them know that their battery, for example, is 1.5 volts, and maybe 1.6 when full, and 1.1 when almost empty, then told them the rate of change of their battery in volts. Do you see how those values on their own did little to impact the person's experience? Then when we apply design thinking and user-centered design, we turn those values into something immediately tangible. The way that we chose to communicate those inferences regarding battery life changed the human experience. It gave us more capabilities through intelligence. The data intelligence was there, and when we applied design thinking, that data became even more valuable. That synergy between data and design and its output, we call design intelligence.

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