What if you could find your customer’s silent triggers, the ones that aren’t visible through analysis of vast amounts of data? When combining thin data (Big data) and thick data (the human context), you get insights with greater clarity, certainty and actionability – and can create an offering that really matters to your end-customers.
While most companies are aware of the value generated by Big data, many still miss out on the very context: the human touch. Making sense of people means going beyond the numbers and look at the whybehind human behavior. This is essential to create meaningful and actionable insights. Algorithms can never give you the full story, something that become painfully obvious with e.g. Brexit and the American election. Unexpected outcomes are really the new expected outcomes.
Thick and thin data
How do you do it then? By effectively combining Big data and thick data, companies can get both whatas well as why, which enables to ‘measure with meaning’. While the fundaments of thin data – Big Data – are about volume, variety, and velocity, thick data is about human context, people’s emotions, motivations. Big Data is based on millions of records from different sources with focus on measurable parameters, while thick data deep dives into the ‘unknown’; it relies on small sets of data that are rich, revealing, relational and real.
Human-centered approach
Do you know the whyin your business? Once you know it, you can start serving your customers better. This is how Lego turned their business, and this is the secret behind Netflix’s success. The question is how to do it? Aim for a human-centered approach, and reach out to specialists if needed. What you’re looking for is the kind of data that psychologists, anthropologists, and social scientists can help to explore, describe, and infuse into business processes.
Cognizant company ReD Associates uses social science tools to gain a deep understanding of people’s behavior and the insights are used at center of business decision-making. Curious to learn more? Join the event Human-Driven Innovation in Tech in Stockholm 4thof September or via livestream.
