S4 E3: Analogue: Anna Casey, Lead User Researcher, Analytics at Tableau

0:00Hello and welcome to episode three, season four of the Dayton Podcast.

0:03Ravi, how are you doing?

0:05I always have to double check whether we've got the correct season, episodes, etc.

0:10Because I'm never quite sure exactly what we were up to.

0:12And I think we'd like both of us have to check.

0:15Right.

0:16Right.

0:16Right.

0:16I use the website just so everyone knows.

0:18I have to actually check because I've been getting it wrong pretty much every episode since the start of this podcast.

0:23Maybe we can get an episode of just your intros.

0:26Just ah fuck ah fuck.

0:28That's more work.

0:29Yeah, true.

0:30True I'll give it to you.

0:32You can edit it.

0:35Well g given given how badly I've been at my one job in this podcast, which is scheduling.

0:39Um I wouldn't it wouldn't put too much stock stock into that for now.

0:45But yeah, how have you been?

0:47What's what's new?

0:47What's new?

0:48Um not much, not much.

0:49So it's been a pretty it's been a pretty pretty strange couple of weeks.

0:52Um man, I think we we launched our last episode just a couple of weeks ago.

0:57So we're actually building up uh a regime here.

0:59I quite like it.

1:00Um and I had quite a few discussions about NFTs.

1:03Snowflakes obviously something that, you know, I'm exploring a lot.

1:06And de aggregators didn't come up too much though after the episode.

1:09So yeah, I think Snowflake and NFTs were the sort of the big

1:12Big topics from the last episode that I've been talking to with a lot of people.

1:15Yeah.

1:17So as of today, uh hubs are open, you can have a drink outside.

1:21Um

1:22I think I saw some vi weird viral pictures of people in dressing gowns having a beer.

1:28I think there was one pub in London that was open at midnight.

1:31Right, right.

1:32Um for people to get the first one in.

1:34Um

1:34But yeah, things are slowly getting back to normal.

1:37I I'm actually going to the office in two weeks.

1:40Risky.

1:40Yeah, risky business.

1:42Going up to Manchester for three days in a couple of weeks.

1:45Um so yeah, think things are slowly we're getting there, we're getting there slowly.

1:48Um what's on the agenda?

1:52Yeah, so uh speaking of consistency, I think

1:55Uh we were talking just before we started.

1:57Um the last time we were consistent was just before I left the information lab.

2:03Um and then before that

2:05The last thing we were consistent before that was uh before I went to Seattle and we did that recording with Ken Martin.

2:10Yeah, yeah.

2:11After which he then left Tableau.

2:13Um so today we've we've got our second guest on, uh um Anna Casey from from Tableau User Research and

2:21Are you pl thinking you're leaving Tableau Anna?

2:24Oh my goodness, what a question.

2:26Absolutely.

2:27Yeah, I mean So Tim, it looks like you're leaving the Mansion Lab in a couple of weeks tool of us time.

2:36Christ.

2:36How about uh I'll I'll get my P forty five ready.

2:40Exact ready for your review.

2:41So um Anna, so the information lab has a policy of like yearly reviews.

2:45The only time you get reviewed

2:47Is when you leave.

2:49Oh.

2:49Oh.

2:50Yeah, basically.

2:51There's no targets.

2:52There's no reviews.

2:55Yeah, the only time you do ever get one is if you leave, so.

2:59Just just like no no time to actually course correct all the things that could have been fixed before we just wanna we wanna debrief basically.

3:07Is that is that what it is?

3:09Basically debrief, yeah.

3:10Yeah, exactly.

3:11Interesting.

3:11Interesting.

3:12Did Gwillem get one?

3:14Uh I think me and Gwillem had to request one.

3:16Okay, cool.

3:17All right.

3:18I'll get myself ready for one then.

3:22Gillum Gillum was a past uh actual um guest on the show.

3:25Um quite a f I think in season three, very beginning of season three, I believe.

3:29Yeah.

3:29Now scrolling back.

3:30Yes, it was season three.

3:32Look at this.

3:32Um

3:32Actually on it with seasons and episodes.

3:34Um yeah, uh Gwillam talked about data ethics a while back.

3:38Um but today we're joined by Anna and um

3:41With analog, what we try and do is we just try and talk to people about um you know how they've arrived at their roles um you know in the roles they play at various companies that

3:50they come from and also just how that gender really looks because of course I think from the outside world, especially as users of a product, we always have this sort of vision that um everyone who works at a certain company has come through a certain path or, you know, eats, sleeps and drinks a certain vibe.

4:04And so we just like talking to um, you know, devs, user researchers, whoever from Tableau to just try and understand how they've arrived um at where they are.

4:13So I guess Anna, probably over to you to do an intro.

4:15Or Ravi, you're about to say something.

4:17I can see yeah.

4:17Oh yeah, I was I was just gonna say that we're not exclusively Tableau, right?

4:20Like any is this podcast.

4:22He's setting me straight.

4:23Any other software vendor

4:27Even though everyone's been from Tableau so far, yeah.

4:29Yeah, exactly.

4:31You gotta start somewhere.

4:32You gotta start somewhere.

4:33Yeah.

4:33Right.

4:34So yeah, Anna, over to you, I'll let you do an intro of yourself.

4:37Yeah, well it's it's really great to be here.

4:39Thank you for having me on.

4:40Um this is my first time being interviewed.

4:43I'm used to being on the other side of this, so this is uh Ah amazing

4:48This is yeah, this is a new experience for me.

4:50Um so yeah, I've been at Tableau for three and a half years as a user researcher.

4:56um came in uh if if what you're looking for is a non-traditional path into user research, then I think you're talking to the right person.

5:05Excellent.

5:06I don't

5:06I didn't don't have a software engineering degree.

5:11I didn't come in through CS.

5:12Um I I started in marketing actually with my undergrad.

5:17Um and was at the University of Texas um and and graduated right when the economy started to tank in uh 2008, which was great.

5:28Really great time to be entering the job market.

5:31Um, Ravi doesn't know what it was like.

5:35No, he doesn't.

5:36Yeah.

5:38Uh doors on high school then.

5:40But anyway, let's move on.

5:41If you were in high school.

5:43I was in high school.

5:44That's better than it could have been, actually.

5:46Like if you had said, you know, if you had told me it was elementary school, I would just hang up right now and leave

5:51So yeah.

5:52Uh Wimpered pastravi there.

5:55Right.

5:57That's why that's why he has to keep the beard

5:59Is is what it told me, right?

6:01Yeah.

6:01Literally legitimacy.

6:03Yeah.

6:03Some some of the things that I'm going to do.

6:04I'll send you a photo of uh Ravi in day one of the data school.

6:08Honestly looks like we hired a child.

6:13Oh, I was I I was watching a big basketball fan was watching the uh March Madness, you know, tournaments, so men's and women's tournaments and

6:22Some of them, you know, they say they're 18, they look 12.

6:25I'm like, no, you're not you're not 18.

6:27There's no way.

6:28And that's how I know I'm I'm I'm getting up there in age.

6:31Yeah.

6:32Yeah.

6:33So University of Texas.

6:35University of Texas into like the worst job market.

6:38Yeah, yeah.

6:39So um so I had kind of done a concentration in it was called customer insights, I think.

6:47But basically more the research side of marketing is what I was interested in.

6:50I had taken kind of the a broad range of courses.

6:53I didn't know what I wanted to do going into undergrad.

6:57The US system doesn't necessarily set you up for

7:00the job market in terms of kind of helping you to map the courses you're taking to actual careers.

7:06I don't know what it's like in the UK, but but this is a challenge that we have.

7:10Okay.

7:10Yeah.

7:11So um

7:13So I liked, I've always just had a really broad range of interests.

7:17Wasn't particularly like like

7:20better, significantly better at anything, one thing over the other.

7:24And so, you know, I liked English, I liked math, I liked history, I liked science, I don't like even tests, but

7:28just a curious kind of kid growing up.

7:31Um and so coming into university, it just felt like really awful, but you have to specialize in something, right?

7:38You have to you have to choose a thing which means you're like

7:41neglecting all these other possible paths.

7:45Anyway, but I landed in marketing in part because of the the range that that field offers you, right?

7:52Like every every company, every industry

7:55has to think about this.

7:56And so yeah, so I ended up in in marketing, liked the research side, and took a course called within my concentration called Consumer Insights, I think

8:07And it walked through the human-centered design process.

8:10Like that would that was the course was to basically say, like, okay, here's your customer segment.

8:15Do some research on them, come up with some product ideas, test those ideas, and then you know give us a prototype at the end of the course.

8:24Except that when I kind of when I really enjoyed that, really liked that and said, okay, how could I do this for my work?

8:30No one had an answer for me because UX was still not really

8:34um a a known industry and job.

8:38There were folks working in HCI for sure.

8:40You know, now I've now I find this out, right?

8:43Now you tell me.

8:44Um but but most of the people that I had asked, you know, w how do I get into that?

8:49How do I get into that kind of product development?

8:51They'd say, well, don't you want

8:53You could do engineering, right?

8:55You could be a mechanical engineer, a chemical engineer, a software engineer.

8:59And it was like, I don't know that that's what I actually want to do.

9:02What I want to do is to be part of that process.

9:06of of doing the investigation of what do we build and how do we build it.

9:10Not just like being the builder.

9:13Yeah, interesting.

9:14I think that's something that you're quite into right, right, Tim?

9:16Like I think we've talked about

9:18Was it the the design of everyday things before?

9:21I think that's that's a book that you recommended.

9:23Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

9:24Yeah, that's a great book.

9:25Small details.

9:26Um I mean you so much of it you just take for granted.

9:30Um it's one of those things

9:32Well I think I can't remember who said this, but there's an expert for everything and I never really sort of appreciated there's an ex there's an expert for every sort of small part of design.

9:40whether it's like a rounded corner, a circle, you know, a squirkle, whatever you want to call them.

9:45Like there's someone who's an expert at literally everything.

9:48And yeah, so that that that's where that sort of book took me down.

9:51But anyway, uh back back to Yana.

9:54Yeah, so um, and that is a great book uh that I didn't discover until graduate school.

10:00Um but that was that was really what I wanted to be a part of was that process

10:06um of and it was just so logical right if you're going to build things for people you should probably include them in that process

10:13Uh seems like a yeah, yeah, just revolutionary idea, but it but in some ways it it is.

10:19Um, you know, so and and people are still trying to figure out, companies are still trying to figure out how to do that really, really well.

10:28So I entered this not great job market and kind of and didn't have a lot of direction in terms of how to get into that.

10:37So I I

10:37I bobbed around, uh, did a few jobs and landed in a role as a project and event manager for about just over five years.

10:46Um and so I was actually doing more kind of designing of, you know, physical experiences and processes.

10:55at uh a property management company and and managing and overseeing a conference center uh that property

11:03could um house like 6,000, I think was the capacity for that.

11:08Um but but again sort of taking what I had learned in school

11:13I I I used that process in my process as a project manager and as an event manager.

11:18And so I had to do things like redesign all of our signage on the property.

11:24And so I talked to the delivery drivers and all of the um the tenants that we had and you know to try to understand like, okay, what's not getting where it needs to go.

11:35And then thinking through the flow for all of the event attendees, right?

11:40What if they come in this entrance or this entrance?

11:42How do we get them to that conference center?

11:44Because it was a big property, it was about 40 acres.

11:47um with eight buildings and so you can get lost.

11:52So yeah, so I did that for for that amount of time and eventually got to this place where

11:57the work that I was doing was no longer really that challenging.

12:01I had I had built out my process.

12:03It was it was a well-oiled machine.

12:06Um the events

12:08It was very easy to say, okay, like someone comes to me, they want to do an event, we do boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, go through this this checklist and this process.

12:17Um and so I I wasn't being quite challenged the way that I needed to be and wanted to be in my work.

12:23And so I started kind of looking around, like, okay, what is it that I actually want to do?

12:27And can I get back to some of the things that really

12:31um I was passionate about in school.

12:34And I think that those years were invaluable because you do learn a lot about the ways that you work and the kind of work flows that you like and the kind of work, you know, that you don't like.

12:45Yeah.

12:46So that was really helpful and informative.

12:49But then I had taken a trip up to Seattle, it just so happened, and I had a friend who had gone back to grad school.

12:55He's a couple years older than me

12:57um had quit his job and and wanted to switch careers.

13:00And I was surprised by that because he was pretty successful in what he was doing before.

13:05And so he started talking to me about this program at the U University of Washington, UW.

13:11And so humans, it was human-centered.

13:14No.

13:15There's two programs, Human Centered Design and Engineering, and Human Computer Interaction and Design.

13:21And they're both um

13:23Yes, it's very confusing.

13:24So H C D E and H C I D.

13:27Um Yes, yes.

13:30That's one that is

13:32It's it's yeah, I I I wish that they were a little more easily differentiated and at the same time the programs are very um they're similar.

13:40They have a different approach.

13:41HCID is more studio

13:44Focused and the cohort is smaller and it's a one-year program, and HCDE is more kind of that your traditional academic kind of program and takes two years.

13:55Anyway, so he kind of talked to me about this prop this program he was in and the field of user experience and everything kind of you know clicked.

14:03It was like that's what I wanted to do.

14:05That's the thing.

14:07Um and then the then the moment of like, well now how do I convince them to let me in, right?

14:12Because I've been out of school for a while.

14:16I don't have a research background or a design background or an engineering background that really gets you into those programs a little more easily.

14:26So

14:27You know, so I started to investigate, okay, like what is it gonna take to get into a program like this?

14:31And what are the other programs in the country that I might have you know more opportunity to get into?

14:39So

14:41Yeah, so there are a few other programs in the US, um, and probably more than even I'm aware of now that have kind of sprung up, but the ones that I was pointed to were uh

14:52CMU Carnegie Mellon University, which has probably got the like kind of most developed and longest history in this area.

15:03I think Alison Wilden did that program in undergrad and I tease her because I'm so jealous that she found it earlier than I did.

15:14And then Georgia Tech has a program and uh Stanford kind of has a program through their design school.

15:21You have to have a different, like you have to have a core major in like engineering or design.

15:27And then you can take courses towards um you know more UX focused um kinds of kinds of things.

15:35Yeah.

15:36But so that one didn't feel like somewhere I was going to land well because I didn't have that engineering undergrad that I was going to need to get into one of those engineering programs.

15:45Georgia Tech.

15:47Atlanta is a great city, but I wasn't I was living on the West Coast already.

15:51I didn't quite want to go all the way over to the East Coast.

15:55Um and I was also thinking about job market afterward.

15:58Um I had been burned already by a job market issue.

16:02Um and so

16:04Seattle just is a great, I mean, just aesthetically a great place to live.

16:09It's beautiful, the water, the mountains, um, but also with with the tech presence here.

16:15Yeah.

16:15Um and and kind of the maturity of the UX practice.

16:19Um it it felt like a really good place to land.

16:22So

16:23I put all my eggs in the UDA basket, basically, and applied here.

16:27Um, and then crossed my fingers really hard without getting in.

16:32So

16:33How how was that experience of getting in?

16:35Did you find it uh obviously you go through the process when when they told you, hey, you know, would you like to start?

16:41How how was that sort of experience?

16:44I I was I was kind of not like I was in disbelief, honestly, um when I when I got the email that said I got in because

16:53You know, you do all this work and you just you don't know.

16:55You don't know.

16:56So I I had to take the GRE, which is a graduate requisite exam, maybe is what it stands for.

17:01Um but

17:03It's just the the standardized test that you have to take to get into some programs more more of the general programs for graduate school.

17:11Like we we have some that are focused on like business or or law, but this one is just kind of a little bit more general.

17:18So I had to study for that and I bought a book and I was going through all the questions and and I was like, I used to know this stuff.

17:24You know, that was the most frustrating thing.

17:27Um kind of getting back into that academic mindset

17:31But I took the exam and my score was was good.

17:34It wasn't great, but it was good.

17:37And then I had to write a um like a personal statement to do some writing to get in.

17:44And I I think I I think I knocked it out of the park with it.

17:47I mean, I think that's the thing that got me in, honestly, was that personal statement.

17:52But you just don't know.

17:53You know, you don't know until they get back to you.

17:55And I was just kind of trying to set those low expectations.

17:58I always joke just my one of my personal um

18:03ph philosophies is like high standards, low expectations, right?

18:08Um you'll you'll you'll never be disappointed.

18:11Uh so

18:12So yeah, I was I was pretty numb.

18:14I was actually having lunch with a friend and and looked at it and and kind of set it down and just was wide-eyed and she's like what ha what's going on and I was like I I got in

18:22You know, I can't I can't believe it.

18:25Um so yeah, it was a great I mean it was a great feeling.

18:27It was it was really awesome, especially when you know you hit a lot of bumps in the road along the way.

18:32Um

18:33And you you keep trying to just put your head down and work, right?

18:37Overcome the obstacles.

18:38Um, but to have something go my way was was, yeah, a really great feeling.

18:43Um

18:44And then I had to do grad school.

18:48I was gonna say, what was your biggest bump?

18:50What was your biggest hurdle that you had to sort of

18:52of uh get over or get past i think i think there was a lot of um just personally maybe like the the self-belief that i could do the thing

19:04you know, um you're switching you're switching careers.

19:07I think the a lot is kind of emphasized on getting on the right

19:11path at the right time right away and and if you don't then you've wasted time and people won't give you a chance and those kind of things.

19:19So you've got all of that kind of swirling in your head.

19:21Yeah.

19:23I felt like I was maybe too old to try to go to grad school and and change paths.

19:27And and it's funny to me now because I've I met so many people in in graduate school who were even older than me who had made these these career changes.

19:36And now, you know, working at Tableau, I've met many people who have switched careers also, right?

19:42And landed here too.

19:43And so you realize it is more common than you think.

19:47And the pads aren't

19:49always that straightforward.

19:50And actually that's a really great thing on Teams, right?

19:53Is to have people with such diverse backgrounds and experiences coming from different industries and different roles.

20:02because they bring all that rich experience with them to the job.

20:06And so much of of what you do when you work collaboratively on Teams is

20:11is the soft skills part is learning how to work with other people, how to bring out the best in them, to bring out the best in you.

20:19Um I think

20:20And you one particular path doesn't always doesn't get you there.

20:25It's actually kind of exposing yourself to a lot of variation and right and differences along the way that makes you better

20:34So yeah, I think there's a there's a great concept called the squiggly career that that covers this.

20:39Um I I got that book recently and it's it's quite interesting because you almost get

20:44It's it's this concept that while you're while you're told from like 18 to 25 that everything is a linear path.

20:53Yeah.

20:53And then you sort of the stabilizers come off and you're like, no, it's not.

20:57Right.

20:58It's absolutely not.

20:59And I think no, e even through that story, you're talking about all the different

21:03programs that you're studying the same thing, but they're they're taking a different lens to it and a different they're shining a different light on it.

21:09Almost shows you that, well actually, yeah, this is you know tripe to an extent because we're getting to a point where it's um

21:18You know, you you you require that diversity in order to make sure you don't miss something.

21:23Right?

21:23Exactly.

21:25Yeah.

21:26Yeah, exactly.

21:27It's a common um it's a common theme, especially as there are lots of roles in the world today that didn't exist five years ago

21:35six years ago.

21:35So naturally, um the only way to form any sort of concept of what skills those roles require is to mix and match lots of different sort of backgrounds.

21:44And that naturally requires people to have lots of different

21:47different paths to the same thing, right?

21:50Yeah, totally.

21:51Um I was I was actually just this weekend asked a question by um she's 18 years old.

21:58trying to decide where to go to school and what path to take, asking me questions about, you know, do I, do I follow my passion?

22:04Like how is that, should I work in something that I'm passionate about or what should I do?

22:08And

22:09And someone else had kind of addressed the the part about things that you're passionate about and and definitely doing that and that that's really what makes your career fulfilling.

22:19And I felt like I was a bit of a

22:21I was trying not to be a curmudgeon there, but I was more trying to just focus on like, you know, you have to go with the flow too, right?

22:29And and your circumstances change and and what we know is that people really do change careers, you know

22:35quite frequently over their lifetime.

22:37And it's sometimes out of necessity, right?

22:39We we work for big companies, we get laid off, right?

22:42We work in a certain role or an industry and and it it just goes into decline.

22:46Um and and so then as a humans we have to adapt and we have to find new ways to brand ourselves and and package our skills and learn new things.

22:56Um and actually that's what makes

22:58life interesting, those times are really hard.

23:01Those transition times are difficult, right?

23:03And and you do go through that imposter syndrome or, you know, l low confidence in yourself sometimes.

23:09And you need kind of your

23:10community uh to help help kind of build you up and tell you you can do it and support you through that.

23:17But um

23:18But you but you do.

23:19We ha we have to adapt and we make these changes.

23:21And just to your point, Tim, right, like there are careers that don't exist now that will in five years.

23:27Right.

23:28Or the role of the analyst, right, may change a lot in the next five years and likely will.

23:34And what will that look like?

23:36You know?

23:37And so

23:38Yeah, exactly.

23:39I mean I'm looking I'm looking right at him on my screen, right?

23:42Um, he's rubbing his hands.

23:45Yeah, and this is something that he and I have talked about a lot.

23:48Um but

23:49But yeah, this is this is kind of how uh a viewpoint that has just helped me so much um because I was that 25-year-old who thought the path had to be linear and then really struggled with like

24:02Is it can I do this, you know, where i i if I jump, you know, will I fly or fall?

24:09Yeah.

24:10So so so you so you got to UMass, uh UW, sorry, UMass.

24:14Very different place.

24:15Um

24:16Massachusetts beautiful.

24:17That's beautiful.

24:18Yeah.

24:19It is.

24:19It's it's it's the one that I I don't know if you guys have played um anything on Sporkle where you have to name all fifty states.

24:26Anyway, it's

24:27It's it's a very British thing to be able to name all fifty states.

24:30I could not do that for all the counties in England.

24:33I I don't I don't know how far I can.

24:34I can do that for states by chance.

24:36Yeah.

24:39Anyway

24:40Massachusetts is always the the speller spelling error.

24:43Anyway, so it's tough.

24:49Finish grad school.

24:50Uh you're in Seattle, which is like, as you say, um a great place full filled with million billion dollar tech companies.

24:57Yeah.

24:58Um how do you end up with Tableau from there?

25:00Yeah.

25:01So I did the and why Tableau?

25:04Oh gosh, now now it feels like I'm being interviewed by Tableau, right?

25:08The the HCDE program is the one that I did.

25:11So I did the two-year program that is

25:14a little bit more academically focused.

25:16Um, you know, I I feel like um does tend to uh lean towards the research side a little bit more than the design side.

25:26Um but

25:28Uh the first year that I of the program, I did a partner project.

25:34Um, so I think it was in my usability studies course.

25:37uh with HTC um and specifically with the the VR unit there.

25:44So um I think it's the Vive is what it's called.

25:46Tim Tim's eye just went like VR Anna.

25:49Why has this been?

25:50Yeah.

25:51Yeah.

25:51So yeah, well exactly, right?

25:53This is this is what you learn when you ask people lots of questions about themselves.

25:57So doing user research on VR is

26:01really hard and fun and hilarious.

26:04I mean hilarious, right?

26:06To see people like trying to figure it out.

26:09Um

26:11It was it was really fun and really enjoyable and a great like you know in uh class project I guess but but we we had to

26:20you know, help them do research on, I think it was a a menu navigation, like for the new Vive Store

26:28Um and the the the kind of partner there at HTC, she had gone through.

26:36the HCDE program.

26:37And so she was our sponsor.

26:39That's that's what we call them sponsors.

26:41Um and I w just kind of established a relationship with her.

26:46She really kind of took a a mentorship.

26:48you know, role with with me and I've always been bad at being the person to like reach out and be like, hey, you know, like how do you ask for a mentor?

26:56Honestly.

26:57You know, that's that's kind of one of those things that I've I've always wondered.

26:59You like just walk up to someone and be like, hey, will you mentor me?

27:02You know, it doesn't

27:03It doesn't really work like that.

27:04It feels a little bit awkward, but um but Angela was awesome and and just kind of took me under her wing and and decided she was gonna help me find an internship and uh tried to get me an internship at HTC and it it didn't

27:18uh pan out, wanted to hire me full time after my first year, and uh that felt that was really intimidating.

27:25Um

27:26But but that also, you know, didn't didn't pan out because I didn't have the experience that the rest of the team was looking for.

27:33But she made the connection with Tableau for me.

27:37And so I had been applying and applying, but she knew one of the UX design managers.

27:44And then he connected me to Amy Alberts, who's the director of user research.

27:49Um, so I I got an interview with Amy and um yeah that anyway that's how I'm gonna stage one yeah doing like the the baseball

28:00thing maybe that might have been that might have been a different Amy.

28:04I don't know if that was the yeah Amy my manager um does the eye tracking stuff

28:12Oh, eye tracking research with Andy.

28:14Yeah.

28:15Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

28:16Yeah, yeah.

28:16That's really cool stuff.

28:18Um so yeah, so they the user research team was looking for

28:23an intern to to work with them on Tableau Labs.

28:27And so that's how I really got in is having that event experience.

28:32And having the the research focus and and interest.

28:35And then also having um just a a passion for data, you know, and having come from

28:41the marketing research side of of really being interested in data and having done some data mining there.

28:46And so, you know, I was I was kinda it's funny when you look back and you go like, oh, it totally makes sense that I would land at Tableau.

28:55Um but

28:56It it didn't at the time when I was applying, it was just like, ah, just get an internship, you know?

29:02Um so

29:04So that's that's how I landed.

29:06Yeah.

29:07Yeah, with your marketing hat on, how do you explain Tableau Labs to someone who's never been to a Tableau conference or a Tableau Tableau event?

29:13Oh yeah.

29:14Yeah.

29:14So it's now, I guess now it's called showcase.

29:17Um I I prefer labs personally.

29:19I prefer labs.

29:20Uh but but it does get confusing with doctor, right?

29:24Like we always have you always have to navigate these different naming uh overlaps.

29:29But essentially Tableau Labs is an opportunity to interact with kind of the features that are

29:38just on the cusp of coming out.

29:40And so on the outside of labs or showcase, we we kind of we kind of design it as a bit of a target.

29:46So your outer ring is usually the stuff that's just been released.

29:52in either beta or um in the most recent, you know, release.

29:58So if we were to have one right now

30:00you know, that that outer ring would be um, you know, the the 21.

30:051 stuff that just came out, right?

30:07And you'd get to get hands-on with it, you'd get to be able to

30:11Ask some devs, you know, questions about it.

30:13Will it work for for this use case or that use case?

30:16Right.

30:18And then kind of as you move in,

30:20there's some uh there's some studies actually that we put together that are maybe more focused on these alpha and beta releases.

30:28And so just trying to get feedback

30:31on refining those things before they go out the door in the next big release.

30:36And then in the inner circle is usually where I am, which is behind closed doors, which is a lot of the stuff that's still very much in concept.

30:45Right.

30:46So we're usually running interviews there, some concept, you know, walkthroughs and studies with you, or or even maybe some lightweight usability.

30:58on those concepts that we'll we'll do.

31:00But that's where we that's where the user research team really focuses our time and effort is is in those kind of inner two rings.

31:08Um so that's yeah, that's labs.

31:11I've always I've always wondered with labs or showcase whatever it is today, is there's there's always this big excitement from attendees when conference is in person to book into those.

31:22And they they always sell out like literally they sell out.

31:25You don't have to sell them.

31:27They just the the sessions that you turn up on like day zero and they're gone.

31:31Yeah, go so the way the way Ravi and I in the past have worked is we just we just get to know devs and we just park ourselves outside of the showcase area and when there's a cancellation or something we just rock in and we j we just take whatever's going at the

31:44at that moment in time.

31:47Right, exactly, exactly.

31:49So I've always wondered like from the perspective of, you know, Tableau

31:53Like, is this your sort of yearly opportunity to talk to customers in that sort of capacity?

32:00And likewise, do you sort of find this friction where you know people like myself and Ravi who are passionate about seeing what's new

32:07kind of rub up against this sort of challenge you've got of trying to gauge people's sort of perception of what they think about.

32:13The true user versus the power user.

32:15Right, right, exactly.

32:16Yeah.

32:16Yeah.

32:16Yeah.

32:17You've got this opportunity with 10 to 15,000 people.

32:20Uh and you really almost want to say, Raven Tim, you guys talked to us all yeah, just go away.

32:25Yes, exactly.

32:27And like out the sessions, like as soon as they're know what's going on.

32:32We've taken it wall to wall.

32:35But in reality, you actually want to listen to Joe Bloggs and Jane Doe, who are the everyday user and you're to try and gauge what is the average user doing today with Tableau and what are their buggers.

32:46Yeah, so I think uh one assumption that I'm hearing you make is that attendees of the Tableau Conference are your everyday user, and I would say that it's weighted heavily towards the power user.

32:58Right.

32:58So interesting

33:00So the or or the brand new, right?

33:03Like your company is just rolling out with Tableau and wants to send people for training and to understand.

33:10And so

33:10you kind of have this like right like this like bimodal distribution of like like I want the people in the middle and they don't necessarily exist there.

33:21Um they're they're usually the really enthusiastic

33:24customers, which is awesome, but it does become challenging for right the kind of you have to know that about your sample and we have to do a decent amount of of explaining that to the feature teams to say like

33:37These are people who are really, really hyped up about the product.

33:39And that's really awesome and that's really inspiring to us in development to remember that we we have people who love the product.

33:47But also, you know, um it's it's challenging from my perspective because I always want you to tell me what's wrong with the thing.

33:54Like that's what I'm trying to get at.

33:55I'm I'm trying to get you

33:57to be critical usually to say like tell me what's not working about this for you rather than you know you just telling me how great

34:06tableau is um because yes it's great but but my job is to make it better right and and my job is to understand uh the needs that you have

34:15Right, what's working for you and then but also what's not working for you, what's causing you friction in your workflow?

34:22What are your pain points?

34:23You know, um, what's what's blocking you from getting to those

34:26more advanced um scenarios that that are really where we're going.

34:32Um but we can't get there yet.

34:34So

34:35That that is a challenge at labs.

34:37And I think, and that's the challenge of kind of figuring out what to take to labs too, because we have a lot internally, we have a lot of interest.

34:47of feature teams wanting to go and wanting to run studies.

34:51And so a lot of it is kind of making a call on what's appropriate to go there.

34:55Will you find the users there that you're actually needing to talk to?

35:01Um, but I think too, like when I joined Tableau, the the user research team has grown just like a lot

35:09Um not enough, we we need more.

35:12Um but but a lot.

35:14And so when I started there were

35:17three of us full-time um on the team and and we had uh one researcher who was kind of both on the academic side with tableau research and doing the user research for uh a specific feature which

35:30W which is Aspetta.

35:32Um and then now I think we have fifteen on the team.

35:37Five zero

35:38No, fifteen.

35:40Um over my yeah, over my three and a half years we've we've expanded the team quite a bit.

35:46And so um

35:49But when I first started, labs was for some teams, you know, uh the best opportunity to get that user research support.

35:57Because we do have to be really choosy about who we who we work with and we have to do a decent amount of just consulting with teams, especially at that time.

36:06Now we're we're able to be much more embedded and focused on Teams.

36:10And so it's not it's not the only opportunity anymore to get feedback at all.

36:17And you know, Tableau is very, very engaged with the customer base.

36:22So the PMs are talking to the customers a lot too.

36:26Which can sometimes make it hard to help people understand sort of what's the value of user research, what's our role, what's our approach, and how is that different from just generally having conversations with customers.

36:39Yeah, I just want to dig into that a little bit because I I I make this assumption um about a certain kind of person in most organizations

36:46They call the salesman, right?

36:48And I I I I always I always feel like this friction between sales and features, right?

36:56Because

36:57On one hand, you've got a salesman who's good at selling something, but they need certain talking points, certain features, sometimes certain features.

37:05certain ways of pitching stuff and I always wonder does do you ever feel that friction a little bit from um not necessarily for the sales team within Tableau but generally speaking because you're in the competitive market do you ever feel that sort of friction to do a little bit of feature parity?

37:20um, you know, in what in what you do.

37:23Oh, absolutely.

37:24Yeah, absolutely.

37:25And I think you know, having come from

37:29at least a a marketing, you know, perspective and and and philosophy.

37:34I understand.

37:35I understand the need to sell the product.

37:37It makes a lot of sense, right?

37:39Right.

37:39You you do have to get people to buy the thing.

37:42Um, and that that requires you to to push things, right?

37:46And and to promote things.

37:49But I think that the the conversations that you're then having and those interactions that you're having with customers, you do need to be very self-aware.

37:58and and be able to say like this is a selling conversation and interaction with a customer and this is a discovery, right?

38:07Interrogative

38:09um research kind of conversation where we really want to understand our users, not push our feature.

38:18And I think the the

38:20The role that probably feels the tension the most is the PMs, right?

38:24They are brought into those selling conversations and at the same time they are having to inform and make decisions about product design.

38:31And so I see them being torn the most.

38:34Um my role I get to say like and I and I do say it even though I do care about us selling the product, but I can say like I don't care.

38:42I don't care about the selling, you know, scenario.

38:45My only job

38:46is to care about um how well what we're doing meets our users' needs.

38:53And that is that is freeing in a lot of ways.

38:56But

38:57As we all know, you know, for your work to be relevant, um, for you to really be able to influence product, you do need to have a deep understanding of

39:07of the other market forces, of what Gartner is saying, right?

39:10Of what um of what leadership is worried about, concerned about, cares about in terms of of the competitive

39:18side of things.

39:19And so and so some of that comes into how you frame your findings and how you communicate because you you do have to speak the language of your audience.

39:28And and so

39:29When I'm talking to the product team, I will highlight certain things, you know, about pain points and prioritizations and risk and workflows and user flows.

39:38And when I'm talk but when I'm talking to leadership, I need to help them map, you know, what we've seen to what their priorities are, what they, you know, what they're worried about, what they're seeing, you know, you know, down coming coming down the pipeline.

39:53And and that that pipeline is something I want to check into as well because what's always interesting, I think you touched on it there and earlier, garden is an interesting concept, right?

40:03Because

40:04As as we talked about in a in a previous pod, um me and Tim have sort of like we we we understand the people that are like, yeah, Gartner doesn't really count because they don't really take into account all of this, XY and Z.

40:16But it's like, well, vendors care about Gartner.

40:18Customers care about Gartner.

40:20So therefore, yeah, it's kind of relevant.

40:21Even if you, power user X, Y, and Z doesn't see the value of the direct comparison.

40:26So I guess my question is, you know, you talk about the

40:31You know, not caring about the sales cycle so much, but you know, having it in the back of your mind.

40:35So what is a typical pipe for a release that you're working on or something that you're interested in?

40:40Is it is it sort of

40:41You're thinking two years in advance, three years, five years, a bit longer?

40:45Because as as we talked about before, like the world of analysis is changing and so is you know tr trying to keep on technology technological change as well.

40:57Yeah, that's a good question.

40:58I think some of this may be personality too.

41:02Um, but I'm always I'm always thinking very far out in a bit like what it you know

41:08Because when I look back and I think about how dramatically things have shifted, right, then it's it's natural to then say like

41:16that that's going to happen in the future.

41:18Like things are going to accelerate and they're going to change.

41:21Um so I I oftentimes think about like what are those constants?

41:25that are likely to to remain true and relevant and and and basically be requirements right for the product to meet someone's needs.

41:34But what are those things that are also going to be changing?

41:37And so

41:39Uh when I think about Gartner, I I think about it very much like I think about sometimes feature requests.

41:48Um their signals.

41:50They're signals to me, right?

41:52Like, and I and I'm I don't mean to say that I ignore feature requests, but it's a signal of of what?

41:57Right?

41:58Of okay, Gartner is saying something about

42:02advanced analytics, augmented analytics, business science, right?

42:07That's a signal to me, but that doesn't tell me how

42:11We need to get there, right?

42:13Um, how it needs to work, you know, um, all of that is stuff that we have to figure out and we have to dig into.

42:22And specifically related to kind of augmented features, AI, ML, you know, whatever, that that has now become a overused, I think.

42:33uh descriptor, but for those things, it's clear that people want their workflows to be quicker

42:41Right.

42:42They want it faster.

42:43They want help from systems, right?

42:46They want automation.

42:47But the requirements needed

42:49for that automation to be successful and to be useful to them, still something that hasn't been fully fleshed out in a lot of use cases.

42:57And I don't think that that's something that Gartner is going to be able to tell us necessarily.

43:02Uh and and I don't think it's something that our customers are going to be able to say, Anna, I need you to build it like this.

43:07It's something that we have to s to do a a

43:11better job of a good job of um seeing through, right?

43:16Seeing past, understanding the context, and not just building what we're asked to build

43:24And that's challenging because it if the sales side is sort of required to put out a feature to satisfy

43:32Gartner, um, to say we check the box that we built this thing, right?

43:36Then then there's that pressure.

43:38But on the product side, I mean

43:40The thing that I am probably obsessed the most about is like, yeah, how do I how do we actually do that successfully?

43:46Like I want to build

43:48a successful, useful, augmented feature.

43:52Like that's what I care about.

43:53And so getting into those things is is how I spend my time.

43:59And it's also almost like getting that to land immediately, right?

44:02Like it's not just building a future, feature future, filt, feature, but making it land immediately.

44:08Yeah.

44:09Yeah, and and when you're talking about advanced statistics and it landing immediately, um, you know, that's a that's a high bar.

44:18Um, because right, all of the things that

44:21that need to be in place for someone to understand.

44:25There's a literacy component there.

44:26And we can kind of say, well

44:29You know, this is only going to be for people who have the literacy.

44:34But can we say that?

44:36Right.

44:36And what can we do to help people build that literacy?

44:39Because I see that as something that

44:41is part of our our role if we if we say we help people see and understand data, then there is a learning and teaching component there as well.

44:50But

44:51But but in in some ways too, I think you have to be a bit a bit predictive, right?

44:56And say like they may not organizations may not have it now.

45:00They may not have the literacy now to ask for these things or to understand these flows, but in five years will they, because of all the efforts that they're putting forth towards that.

45:10I I think that you know the being being it's it's the concept of being at the bus stops where when the bus eventually arrives, you're ready to go.

45:17I think um when you when you were talking the thing I had in my mind

45:20about the the biggest changes we've had in you know the last decade, last five years almost, is five years ago, I I can honestly say I didn't really spend that much time browsing the internet on my phone.

45:31Whereas now, even with the laptop in front of me, I'll reach my phone to Google something, right?

45:35Like and and adopters in the early 2010s

45:39With designing mobile websites almost seemed weird.

45:42Like, why are you focusing on that?

45:43Because you most of your users aren't there.

45:44It's like, not yet.

45:46But when they get there, I want to be the person that's ready, not trying to find a mobile web developer.

45:50Right.

45:51Right

45:51And and the second thing I wanted to pick up on there was you talking about Ghana as a signal, whereas me and Tim sit at the Tableau Conference keynotes, almost not listening to what's being said, but trying to find signals within that.

46:02So it's quite like

46:03We're almost one step removed from you guys listening for signals and then we're listening for signals from what you've come from.

46:08And one of the subtle changes I noticed, uh I think it must have been three years ago, was the emphasis and the slight like glow.

46:17of we we help people see and understand data came like moved from see and understand data to people and that was almost not non-in insignificant change it's like well actually we're we're now focusing on the people

46:31And we're not telling you that, but if you're watching and you can see that, you and then if you bear that in mind over the last three years of augmented analytics, you know, the the the direction of travel we're going with with analysis.

46:44It's again spotting those things that they're not explicitly saying.

46:48Yeah.

46:49I mean we did this for for the most recent keynote, right, Tim like

46:52Mm-hmm.

46:53Having a having a chat where we're not watching it, but we're talking about what we're not ad libbing again.

47:00Um

47:00And it's it's fascinating because, you know, people like Gravy and I then try and listen for your responses to those

47:08Echo calls.

47:09It's a bit it's a bit like you're in the forest shouting and you hear something and then someone shouts back and Ravi and I sat in between, like trying to like trying to get things.

47:19Um one one thought I had in my mind actually is

47:23It's it strikes me that, you know, well to two things.

47:26Process seems like a really important part of your role in terms of I I guess being a steward of an idea to this creation, right?

47:33And um

47:35The first question I was gonna ask, I'll I'll tell you both questions and you can answer them in whichever order.

47:39First question I was gonna ask is how often does that get in the way?

47:41Or does it, um if that makes sense?

47:43sense, right?

47:44Uh how often can s is it possible that you can see something really clearly that you know how to execute that you that actually the process starts to become what slows it down, right?

47:53And then the second question is actually more about sort of your customers in in the sense that like I mean I'm a consultant, so I'm sort of sitting here looking uh listening to you talk about how you get from this idea to creation.

48:05And I think

48:06Man, we dashboard builders have so long, so far to go.

48:12We start at the end of the process with dashboards.

48:15And then we try and figure ourselves back to the beginning.

48:18So we'll build something, it'll get trashed, and then we'll go, well, maybe we should have talked to people before we built this.

48:23And then it goes all the way back.

48:24So you're laughing because you know it's true.

48:26So I was I was our second question was going to be

48:29Are there sort of some small tips from your experience building a product that you can give on to people who build dashboards to say, hey, think about the way you do this this way?

48:38So I know two big questions there, but um yeah, they're kind of kind of related.

48:42Yeah, so uh I have a question back at you.

48:45When you when you're talking about process, um what what do you mean by the the process like the whole like software development lifecycle?

48:53Right, exactly, exactly.

48:55Working with engineering and PM and Right, exactly, exactly.

48:58How much does that get in the way of expediating some things that you realize should just be done and there's already a clear way of doing it, right?

49:07Yeah, I mean all you know all the time.

49:14We've been talking sort of about more the the the sales and the broader ecosystem and the pressures and the market, right?

49:21And

49:21And those get in the way.

49:23You know, you can have an idea of, okay, we want to make the the following fixes to an experience, but that's no longer in the strategic.

49:33focus for the you know for this coming year and so that gets put on the back burner so that happens um you come to find out

49:42midway through or late in the process that you have some some assumption you made early on on the engineering side or some you know costing that you made

49:51early on was wrong and now it's gonna take longer to fix this thing.

49:55Um and it becomes a challenge and you have to redesign some way that it it was meant to work before.

50:01So that comes up.

50:02Um I think

50:04I think the other thing that that happens is, and this is probably now starting to bleed into what you're talking about, but

50:14People will go into building something with a list of assumptions that they don't have written down, but are definitely in their head, right?

50:22Like I'm I'm assuming they want XYZ and they need it to work this way

50:27because that's how this other thing that I did worked.

50:31Um and you do well to test those things very early and to have early conversations with the people who are going to use it

50:40not just about how the layout should look and what kind of chart should be there, right?

50:45But but even like walk into the conversation and say, okay, I'm assuming that

50:50this and this and this about you, right?

50:53As a as an analyst or an author, right?

50:57If I were to talk to one of you, I'd say, well, I'm assuming you're embedded with a team.

51:01and you have someone doing all of your data prep for you and you have a really

51:09proficient end user base who will pick up how to use this dashboard quickly.

51:14Am I right or wrong, Tim?

51:16You know, and you'd be like, no, no, no.

51:19Right.

51:20And and shoot those things down.

51:21And now we're having to have a we have to have that reset conversation, that broader conversation for me to understand

51:28the the the inputs for you and the outputs um as well in addition to your process and what that process looks like.

51:35Yeah.

51:36Amazing.

51:37Yeah, I mean it sounds so simple when you put it like that.

51:40And it's I think as a consultant, we're often two two to three steps removed from that.

51:45And rarely do you get a chance as a consultant um in in some settings to actually

51:49be part of that process.

51:51Normally you come in after the company thinks they've already done that and they tell you sort of what their version of that is and it was actually the manager of the team doing that and themselves, right?

51:59The manager makes assumptions and then, you know, things things go awry.

52:03People ask why is it not being used?

52:05Well, because people who are using it didn't help build it.

52:07So

52:07You know, it's a really important part of the process.

52:10And pivoting from consultant to customer.

52:13I think the interesting part the interesting part has been inheriting other people's stuff and then almost like taking that to a point of

52:21What was the reason this wasn't done?

52:22Oh, time.

52:23Okay, well I've got time.

52:24And then you realize, no, no, I haven't got time.

52:26Uh and then you come up with this concept that every well everyone who tries to do something is usually

52:32ideas and questions rich but time poor.

52:34Right.

52:35And you know, because they don't have the technical skills to get from A to B where that what would be is their vision.

52:41Um, they end up with like this weird halfway house, which is neither here nor there, and then that that sort of dashboard or tool goes to die in the the graveyard of

52:49Projects that were started and never really quite finished, right?

52:53And I'm enjoying this conversation.

52:55I'm enjoying this conversation for two reasons.

52:57Uh a, because we're sort of talking about the development of analysis.

53:00And three, we're really dancing around the topic of, you know, dashboardless um and this Oh God

53:09Exactly.

53:10And he's already an hour in Ravi.

53:11Come on, don't have three hours here.

53:15But but exact exactly that.

53:17It's such a broad topic about, you know, we're trying to understand users.

53:20And I think I've reached out to you, Anna, before, like in a session of

53:24How do I actually engage with the user?

53:26How do I actually speak to a user about I want to now interview my my end users about my dashboards and be like

53:33Talk me through our users, like talk out loud, click on these things and um dig into those concepts.

53:40Yeah, one one thought that I had there too was just thinking about user research and how again like

53:47as the builder of the thing, right?

53:48You're a you're an analyst, uh an author, you're you're a PM, you're building, you know, kind of

53:54Shepherding the execution of this thing through.

53:59You are time poor, right?

54:00Like you have the things that you really have to dedicate your time to.

54:03Having a user researcher or or having a user research lens to think about

54:08um the end to end really to help you set that context to to elevate your your thinking outside of just this one problem that you're trying to solve.

54:17I have to build this one dashboard, right?

54:18To like I think what you and I talked about, Robbie, was like

54:21What does their day-to-day look like?

54:23Like what does their workflow look like?

54:24Right?

54:25What are the other things that they're doing before they come to this dashboard, after they come to this dashboard?

54:30What are the decisions that they're making?

54:32And so when I came to Tableau, there weren't that many user researchers.

54:36That was challenging for me as a brand new, you know, brand new to the role.

54:41But what it allowed me to be involved in was features all across, all across the product, right?

54:48and to start to establish my own understanding and perspective of that high level, like what do authors do

54:56Right.

54:56Yeah.

54:57And what can we say and understand about them?

54:59And what questions do we need to be asking that are going to start to uh branch their experience, right?

55:06So that's some of the things I mentioned, right?

55:07Like how clean is the data?

55:09that they're working with.

55:10You know, do they have the support of of a data engineer or a data prepper or a curator, right?

55:16Or or are they having to do all that work themselves?

55:19And then on their end user side, how much education and promotion, right, of of data in their organization do they have to do?

55:28Is that a big piece of of

55:31their work or or do they just build dashboards, right?

55:34And and most of the time the answer to that is no.

55:37There's some other things going on.

55:39There's something else that's relevant to their role.

55:42that's going to color and contextualize the work that you're focused on and learning about.

55:47And so I think user research can be really, really helpful there and can also help you to start to find those signals of where is

55:56where is the market going?

55:58Um you know where where do people want to be?

56:01And and then bring that back to the teams to start to think creatively about how we help people get there and what are the requirements to get there.

56:09Right.

56:10Right.

56:10Yeah, it's it's it's awesome.

56:12Like I just listen to you talk.

56:13I mean, you you think about this in a much more um I think your practice sorry I should say

56:18say your practice thinks about this in a much more structured way that I think fundamentally allows you to do one thing which is often quite hard in terms of

56:26Of analytical dashboards and just analytical work, which is the lineage of a concept.

56:31Because you, as a user researcher, start that journey and you take care at each step, the lineage of thought is actually

56:39almost very transparent in the product itself, right?

56:42The product will have assumptions in there, it will have a certain design, it will have a certain purpose.

56:46We're trying to meet certain names and you can quite confidently say at the end of it

56:50uh when it doesn't do something, yeah, we weren't intending to do that.

56:53You know, that's that wasn't our goal, right?

56:55And I think often too much in analytics

56:58the opposite is true.

56:59We're trying to do everything and we we you know, the lineage of something involves too many or too few people, but

57:07Never sort of the right people, right?

57:09And that monumentally increases the margin of error, right?

57:12Like the the more the more you either take on or the more you distribute.

57:17And and and the the the it's the hardest thing is finding that sweet spot.

57:20Right.

57:20And like exactly like that and does it even exist.

57:23Mm-hmm.

57:23Yeah.

57:25100%.

57:25Yeah.

57:26One of the things you've made me think about that I think about a lot in my role that applies then to data just more broadly is bias.

57:33right is cognitive bias and how that impacts this whole process, all of you know, and just humans, right?

57:39Understanding humans and cognitive biases.

57:41But um

57:43our role is to really address those things in our process, right?

57:47And we we apply some scientific rigor to how we go about this process of discovery and understanding and learning to try to control for

57:57Bias in the sample, right?

57:58Who we talk to, bias in the way that we ask questions.

58:01Are they leading?

58:03Right?

58:04We're concerned about that.

58:05I want bias in

58:07uh uh acknowledging the fact that because I'm the one who built the thing, you're going to be afraid of hurting my feelings.

58:14And so I need to establish a kind of a safe space there for you to tell me.

58:19whether this thing is okay.

58:20I don't know how many times I've gone through a session where the person spent 35 minutes, 40 minutes not understanding a damn thing.

58:27that I put in front of them and at the end telling me how great the work that I'm doing, you know, this this thing is so great and it's gonna help people and Tableau is awesome.

58:36And I'm like

58:37We didn't understand any of it, you know, so clearly.

58:42We've got a lot of work to do, right?

58:44But people, there's that, that's that's part of understanding human behavior and interaction and bias

58:50And then on the end, right, well, actually even before that, are we asking the questions to get at the things that we don't know and those gaps, right, that that are going to help us test our assumptions?

59:03And then at the end, how are we doing that analysis on the data?

59:07And it's not that there isn't bias at the end of it, right?

59:10It's just being able to give that context that tells you exactly how it's been.

59:15biased and say we talked to these people and we asked these questions and we were focused on these things and here's what it tells you and here's what it doesn't.

59:24And that's so very similar to what you have to do in setting context around dashboards and the analysis that you've done, right?

59:31And whether you are communicating that in a report.

59:35right, if it's a a journalistic article, if it is right, if it's a dashboard that's interactive, it's a if it's a data set that's been curated and you're handing over to someone and they're

59:46um setting that context, letting people know what how that how it's been processed and how that might you know impact the takeaways that you can

59:57make from this analysis, from this data is is super important.

60:03But yeah, we we think about that a lot.

60:06Amazing.

60:07I I I yeah, I think I have to sort of walk away from this chat and uh reevaluate sort of how I've approached um because sometimes it's very easy to just

60:16Just do what clients ask you to do, right?

60:18Uh and actually it's often often as a consultant you really have to do is sometimes challenge what they're saying

60:24Um in a sort of coaching method, right?

60:26That you're not you're not there to tell them what to do, but you're there to ask the right questions that makes them consider whether what they're doing is the right thing to do or not.

60:33At least that's what I think coaches do anyway.

60:35Um but um yeah, yeah

60:38Amazing.

60:38We've we've been going for an hour, so I think I I think I have to I have to check do a time check and uh uh sort of try and bring this to a close 'cause

60:45It would appreciate if we had all day we we could honestly go all day.

60:49We could do a whole season just.

60:50Probably true.

60:53That's what basically happened.

60:54So um

60:55Uh thank you.

60:56Thank you so much.

60:56There's so much from there.

60:57Like I learned a lot about you.

60:59I've I've I've talked very briefly to you on Slack and I feel like there's so much more now that I'm gonna be

61:04chasing you for up to this course there.

61:06It's probably gonna start with HTT HTC and VR.

61:09VR vibe, tell me everything.

61:11Anna, Anna, for context, I left the current company I'm at to go to Accenture because of VR

61:17And then it did work out.

61:19And then I came back.

61:20So I have lots of thoughts uh that I could definitely share with you on that one.

61:24Um

61:25But I also think uh everyone who's been listening, whether they're user, researcher, want to get into UX or even building dashboards, um anyone who's passionate about Deblo will have learned so much from sort of discussion we've had today with you because

61:38Again, we just think it's really fascinating how people who build products sort of think about the products they build because that lets gives us a window into how we should be using the tools.

61:47And just by talking to you, I think

61:49It's a lot we can learn about doing uh I guess building products, uh whether they're dashboards or analytical products in a in a in a better way.

61:57Um Ravi, any any closing comments from you?

62:00No, it's been awesome.

62:01It's been amazing.

62:02I always enjoy our chats, Anna.

62:04I think the the the sort of it came it came off the back of maybe an Ar Stator Explained data session that we had um maybe a year or so ago that we just ended up

62:13With kindred spirits.

62:15Um and a lot of a lot of conversations around um yeah, the future of analysis, dashboarding, and

62:21And sports, which is always anything.

62:23And sports.

62:23Yeah, that's that's the thing we didn't talk about at all that we could spend yeah, a really long time is

62:28And this whole time you had the NVA scorers thing in the background.

62:31I kept meaning to actually talk about it.

62:34I take full credit for Anna's impulse purchase of that.

62:37particular thing.

62:40So yeah, oh my goodness.

62:41I I I love sports analytics.

62:44I just finished attending uh the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference Thursday and Friday of last week.

62:51Yeah, if if if you ever want to do a podcast nerding out on that, then I'm happy to come back.

62:58I mean I'm happy to come back anytime, but yeah, that that would be a fun one.

63:02Boom.

63:03We'll we'll hold you to that.

63:04We'll hold you to that.

63:05Awesome.

63:06Good stuff.

63:07All right.

63:08All right.

63:09Thank you both for having me.

63:10No, absolutely, absolutely.

63:12No worries.

63:12It's been an absolute pleasure.

63:14Uh for everyone listening, if you want to uh listen to the podcast online, you can head to datonpodcast.

63:20com.

63:20We're available on all the major podcast apps, uh Apple Podcasts, Overcast Podcast, TUNIN, all that.

63:26stuff.

63:26Uh and also reach outs to us on Twitter.

63:28Ravi, I've forgotten our Twitter handle, as is always.

63:33I can't remember if it's Dayton Pod or Datum Podcast.

63:36What is it?

63:37It's it's it's Death Taxes and Tim not realizing what the website is versus the podcast

63:47Twitter is datum pod and this is just a hassle.

63:50I have to find whoever has datum podcasts on Twitter and get it off them.

63:54Or was it you who preferred it to be called Pod?

63:57I think it's you're not sure.

63:58I take no credit.

63:59I think it's your love for the word pod.

64:03Right.

64:03Uh thank you very much, Anna.

64:05Um thank you thank you for joining us and thank you everyone for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.

64:09Awesome.

64:10Take it easy.

64:11Thanks