041 - Data Thinking: An Approach to Using Design Thinking to Maximize the Effectiveness of Data Science and Analytics with Martin Szugat of Datentreib...

The job of many internally-facing data scientists in business settings is to discover,explore, interpret, and share data, turning it into actionable insight that can benefit the company and improve outcomes. Yet, data science teams often struggle with the very basic question of how the company’s data assets can best serve the organization. Problem statements are often vague, leading to data outputs that don’t turn into value or actionable decision support in the last mile.

This is where Martin Szugat and his team at Datentreiber step in, helping clients to develop and implement successful data strategy through hands-on workshops and training. Martin is based in Germany and specializes in helping teams learn to identify specific challenges data can solve, and think through the problem solving process with a human focus. This in turn helps teams to select the right technology and be objective about whether they need advanced tools such as ML/AI, or something more simple to produce value.

In our chat, we covered:

• How Datentreiber helps clients understand and derive value from their data — identifying assets, and determining relevant use cases.
• An example of how one client changed not only its core business model, but also its culture by working with Datentreiber, transitioning from a data-driven perspective to a user-driven perspective.
• Martin’s strategy of starting with small analytics projects, and slowly gaining buy-in from end users, with a special example around social media analytics that led to greater acceptance and understanding among team members.
• The canvas tools Martin likes to use to visualize abstract concepts related to data strategy, data products, and data analysis.
• Why it helps to mix team members from different departments like marketing, sales, and IT and how Martin goes about doing that
• How cultural differences can impact design thinking, collaboration, and visualization processes.

 

Resources and Links:

• Company site (German) (English machine translation)
• Datentreiber Open-Source Design Tools
• Data Strategy Design (German)  (English machine translation)
• Martin’s LinkedIn

 

Quotes from Today’s Episode

“Often, [clients] already have this feeling that they're on the wrong path, but they can't articulate it. They can't name the reason why they think they are on the wrong path. They learn that they built this shiny dashboard or whatever, but the people—their users, their colleagues—don't use this dashboard, and then they learn something is wrong.” - Martin

“I usually like to call this technically right and effectively wrong solutions. So, you did all the pipelining and engineering and all that stuff is just fine, but it didn't produce a meaningful outcome for the person that it was supposed to satisfy with some kind of decision support.” - Brian

“A simple solution is becoming a trainee in other departments. So, ask, for example, the marketing department to spend a day, or a week and help them do their work. And just look over the shoulder, what they are doing, and really try to understand what they are doing, and why they are doing it, and how they are doing it. And then, come up with solution proposals.” - Martin

...I tend to think of design as a team sport, and it's a lot about facilitating groups of these different cross-departmental groups of arriving at a solution for a particular audience; a specific audience that needs a specific problem solved.” - Brian

“[One client said] we are very good at implementing the right solutions for the wrong problems. And I think this is what often happens in data science, or business intelligence, or whatever, also in IT departments: that they are too quick in starting thinking about the solution before they understand the problem.” - Martin

“If people don't understand what you're doing or what your analytic solution is doing, they won't use it and there will be no acceptance.” - Martin

“One thing we practice a lot, [...] is in visualizing those abstract things like data strategy, data product, and analytics. So, we work a lot with canvas tools because we learned that if you show people—and it doesn't matter if it's just on a sticky note on a canvas—then people start realizing it, they start thinking about it, and they start asking the right questions and discussing the right things. ” - Martin