Making Data Awesome with Sara Michelazzo

Barry O’Reilly and Sara Michelazzo know each other from their days working together at Thoughtworks. Sara is Head of Customer Experience - Tech Operations at Thoughtworks, as well as Design Advisor at Nobody Studios. Sara is an advocate for women in tech, cryptos, and NFTs. In this week’s show, she and Barry discuss human-centered technology design and making data awesome to empower users to solve real-world problems. Empowering People with Technology “I've never been a superfan of technology for technology's sake, but more about all the opportunity that technology brings to empower people and allow them to do things that they couldn't do before and connect them in new, meaningful ways,” Sara remarks. She tells Barry that it was seeing how technology allowed her father to continue working on his passion during his illness, that drove her to pivot from her art career into tech. Human-Centered Design Making technology simple for users is at the heart of human-centered design. Sara tells Barry that she fully grasped the power of intuitive design through her father’s experience. Technology should be easy for users to grasp and adopt, she posits. We should design for 50% of people’s attention instead of 100% because we all have so many other things going on in our lives at any moment. Barry asks her about the future of tech and what she had to unlearn regarding technology design. Humans are the same while technology is growing exponentially, she responds. As such, we need to meet people where they are and bridge the gap. Making Data Awesome Barry and Sara discuss Thoughtworks’ journey to become data-driven. The best software or spreadsheet means little if people don’t know how to use the data, they both agree. Sara realized that her strength was in seeing the user’s perspective; she got comfortable asking questions such as, ‘Will the user understand this?’ and ‘How are they going to use it?’ Shifting the mindset from data and dashboards to people was a tall order, Sara says, but it was the only way forward. People don’t care about data per se; they just want to do better work. This was the principle behind their Data Awesome framework - for users to experience data delight instead of data frustration. The Data Awesome framework is made up of six simple steps including: Understand the audience; Define the job to be done; Determine the questions to answer to get the job done; Find the answers. Looking Ahead Barry asks Sara what she is looking forward to as she looks to the future. The opportunities that NFTs bring makes her excited. “I'm learning tons about unstructured people achieving incredible results, and it's very refreshing to see how hundreds of people can contribute to an outcome without being in meetings or meeting each other very often,” she tells Barry. They talk about the value of the community of followers and creators. “The value of NFTs goes up as the popularity of the project increases. The idea is that we’re all in this together,” Sara comments. Read full show notes at Barry O'Reilly. Resources Sara Michelazzo at Website | Thoughtworks | LinkedIn | Twitter Articles on Thoughtworks: Why do Data Platforms Fail? | The Data Awesome Framework | Five Tips from the Data Awesome Frontline