So what’s better, designing with or without data? Most, if not all, designers will tell you that designing with data is always better, and it would be wrong to tell you otherwise. Data, whether qualitative or quantitative, will help define new problems, settle arguments, make decisions, understand what is happening and even why it is happening. As long as the researcher or analyst knows what they are doing, data can always help. As designers, we can certainly ignore it when we want, bend it when appropriate, or infer something from it, but the data will create a path that we should utilize to define our best solutions.
So where does that leave designing without data? While not ideal, it is a reality for many designers across the industry. Whether it be a resource constraint, a lack of knowledge on how to conduct research, or an inability to find or analyze good data, not all designers have data to fall back on. This is where designers can really hone their abilities. Designing without data, in the right circumstances, can teach a designer to be crafty. In these situations, designers have to focus on theory, mental models, best practices, prototyping, making key assumptions, and really communicating the user's needs because there are no graphs to point to. Therefore, having an experience where you do not have access to data can actually help a designer learn to think more creatively and understand how their solutions impact the user from a different perspective.
Of course, the goal is to be able to have both, the ability to design with data but also to apply other types of knowledge. If a designer can do that, they'll be one step closer to designing a more well-rounded solution.
