Sick Design: Non Comprehendus

(Latin: “Lack of Understanding”)

You’re tracking our beta testers, having just rolled out your new app feature. But the churn is crazy high! You’re getting almost no one making it through the app. Revert, revert, revert! Two weeks later, you  realized the analytics code was broken… whoops. Ah, you’ve got a bad case of a lack of understanding!

COMMON SYMPTOMS: 

• Certain individuals on your team hold all the company critical knowledge and experience
• A balding spot on your head from scratching it so much in confusion 
• A raw throat from screaming “whhhyyyyyyyy!?” to the heavens in frustration 

CAUSES: 

• No system for reviewing your team’s work
• No process for transferring knowledge
• Fear of learning new things

TREATMENTS:

In addition to testing the right things, you must make sure the tests themselves are accurately set up from a technical standpoint. Launching A/B testing on live pages or setting up analytics within a website or app can be tricky. You can draw wrong conclusions if the data being collected is faulty. And you’ll end up putting the focus in the wrong areas.

Many designers look to developers to help set up this type of data collection, but lack of understanding arises when there is no shared knowledge. Everyone makes mistakes. You shouldn’t rely on one person to set everything up. Doing so, invites a high probability of error, which will affect your data.

Work Together to Prevent Lack of Understanding

Your designers and developers should work together on any tests or data collection with a more technical component. Ensure your entire team understand how it all works and can troubleshoot if the numbers seem off. 

Review everyone’s work and share the knowhow amongst the team. This way you’ll be able to catch errors early. And trust us, there will be errors at some point. 

Your designers may shy away from diving into these kinds of things, but this understanding will bring them closer to the data and help them see the impact their work has.

Helio has made it easy for designers to start collecting this data. For instance, our Landing Page Conversion test template can you get data that pinpoints leaks in your funnel.