“You don’t truly understand something until you quantified it. But you understand nothing at all if all you do is quantify.”
— Unknown Author
The limitation of quantitative data is that it describes what happened but not why or how it happened. As design researchers, we should seek answers to the questions of why by talking to our customers or stakeholders.
Combining quantitative and qualitative research methods is a good rule of thumb. Remember, quantitative and qualitative methods complement one another; they are complementary, not mutually exclusive.
“If you base all your design decisions on data only, your designs will be only as good as your data is.”
When working on design projects, whether it’s for my clients or myself, I like to remind myself that:
Data can be inaccurate and misleading. It is better to assume that not all data you get is always 100% accurate.
Be aware of biased interpretations of data. Data can often be intentionally skewed by those presenting it to us.
I try to make decisions based on my intuition, experience, knowledge, and other sources of information. I rarely rely on data alone.
So my advice would be: use data to verify your hypotheses or to justify your points when relevant, but be careful to rely on data as your only source of information, as it can backfire on you. It’s healthy to be slightly sceptical of given data, especially when unsure where it came from. And always watch for biased interpretations and question your sources.
📖 If you want to dig deeper on this topic, here are some articles worth reading:
