Invite Math into Your UX Design Approach

Quant UX is a real thing. Math simply does things that qualitative UX does not. And it is, and never should be, about choosing one over the other. They both provide value. To add Quant UX to your process, find a valuable question where a mathematical answer will add insights. Then find yourself a data scientist or mathematician and see what they can do with the question.

A few other things:

If you know a little bit about systems thinking, it’s an excellent place to start to naturally see overlap in qualitative and quantitative approaches to UX and naturally also pull in business and technology.
Quant UX is enough of a Ã¢â‚¬Å“thingÃ¢â‚¬Â that Google is holding its second Quant UX conference in 2023.
This is a very broad field (like UX in general). Combining traditional UX approaches in statistics with AI/ML or advanced mathematical techniques.
If you are starting to do this in your team, a simple UX approach to start with is identification (say doing interviews, observations, even workshops) followed by quantification (say doing surveys, analytics).
To look for the overlaps in the math and qualitative approaches, sometimes you have to dig really deep; for instance, how you identify variables or parameters in the system of interest. At that point, you’ll almost always find an intersection point between qualitative and quantitative.

Scott Plewes

Chief Strategy Officer

Over the past twenty-five years, Scott has worked in the areas of business strategy, product design and development in the high tech sector with a specialization in experience design. He has extensive cross-sector expertise and experience working with clients in complex regulated industries such as aviation, telecom, health, and finance. His primary area of focus over the last several years has been in product and service strategy and the integration of multi-disciplinary teams and methods. Scott has a master's degree in Theoretical Physics from Queen's University.