Numbers and Design? Say What?

“Usability is often quantitative. But design is qualitative. Is this why usability experts so often make poor design recommendations?” I saw one of my connections on LinkedIn had commented on this post and I came to the following conclusions:

1. This is a huge generalization

2. Designers should form their own informed decisions based off of the analysis and synthesized data

3. This problem is two-fold - designers should have a better understanding of the quantitative side

In my grad program, I decided to take a stats class, “Measuring the User Experience”. Many who asked what I was taking were surprised and a common question was why do you need stats”?  To me, this question can be compared to a chef at a local upscale Boston hot spot.  Would you not expect this chef to have a basic understanding of where the ingredients to his food come from?  He may not be the expert at growing the food, but he knows enough to appreciate his dishes even more.  So why should we not be that intimate with our data?
Although it is ultimately the designer’s job to design and the researcher’s job to research, we should all have one foot on each other’s turf.  Just as researchers help us with design puzzles, we should also try to understand where our data comes from.  This means both the qualitative and quantitative.
Not everyone should be a stats expert, but it makes us much more valuable when we have a general understanding of what metrics to capture and the various ways to analyze the data.  For example, when you see the term confidence interval in a report, do you know what that means and roughly how that came to be?   Or what about when a mean or median should be used? T-test – is that what a pregnancy woman takes?  We don’t need to know every stats term, but it would not hurt to have a basic point of reference by adding another book to the bookshelf.  Not sure about you, but I want to know what food I use in my kitchen.