What makes a good insight?

Insights are our opinion about why facts are what they are.

An insight is the connection between the evidence and the action. Fact and recommendation.

It should include the context and/or the cause and/or the effect of the evidence.

Example:

• Customers can't find invoices in the footer (context) 
• because they see invoices as related to their personal account rather than the product (cause), 
• so they call the contact centre (effect).

Short, easy to understand, and backed by evidence.

Insight taxonomy:

Insight filters should provide context, type and theme. 

An insights taxonomy should help give us the context we need if we are looking at it in isolation.

If we made a test in Italy, for example, that is important to know if I am in Japan. This could be good evidence that there is something there, but our cultures are different enough to make me want to retest this.

The 'insight type' is also interesting: 

• A Principle is something that likely effects every part of our organization.  
• A Strategic insight might be specific to a particular team or feature - but guides our strategic thinking.  
• A Tactical insight is likely to be very specific to just that part of the experience - such as the position of a button.  
• I also think it's important to make it clear when an insight is specific to a Prototype.  
• We might want to add an insight as an Assertion or hypothesis. 
• And once we’ve moved that button we might want to mark the insight as Obsolete or completed.

Next: Understand what makes a good recommendation >>