Analytics is not the answer

A CEO I know has finally come round to the idea that endlessly changing things and adding new features is not the way forward – Hazaar! He now thinks that analytics will provide all the answers. As the company hops from the frying pan of whimsical change into the hellish fire of stats I have been arguing for user testing to be thrown into the mix. This is an uphill struggle.

The CEO threw up the idea of analytics identifying the cancer that we can chop out. I suggested that, pushing the analogy further, if analytics was the x-ray that identified the cancer then user testing is equivalent of talking to the patient.

It will be interesting to see if this patient survives.