#VISUALIZE QUALITATIVE DATA HOW TO#

When you’re sharing results from qualitative user research efforts, you’re most likely focusing on creating an understanding for the lives people lead, the tasks that they need to fulfill, and the interactions they must effect so as to achieve what they need or want to do. Ben Shneiderman, Distinguished university professor in computer science “The purpose of visualization is insight, not pictures.”

#VISUALIZE QUALITATIVE DATA HOW TO#

Let’s show you how to visualize more subjective and fuzzy data from qualitative user research methods, in a way that communicates the essential insights to other stakeholders, so they don’t have to plow through voluminous research reports. Moreover, the insights you will want to communicate sometimes don’t translate to a clean number. Frequently, the number of participants in these types of studies is too low to create meaningful graphs. Graphs are often not the best way to communicate the results from qualitative user research methods such as interviews or observations.

But this is mainly true for results from quantitative user research. Do you have that image, too? You would be right in thinking that many research results benefit from a graph-like visualization, showing trends and anomalies. When thinking about visualization of research results, many people will automatically have an image of a graph in mind.

Visualize qualitative data