A List Apart has an excellent article on the Importance of Integrated Data to perform a Connected UX. It’s definitely worth a read:
Aaron Walter, the UX Director at Mailchimp, spent many years struggling with inefficient user research–the team often needed data that they had done before but couldn’t find, or was being recorded by another part of the company and never shared. He began using Evernote to store his team’s findings. When he asked other teams for their data and began integrating it into their database, a shift happened that dramatically improved the way the whole company stored, searched for or thought about data. It led to greater collaboration among disparate teams and a lot of unexpected innovations. What began as a UX-led side-project, eventually turned into a company-wide initiative that changed their culture.
The story really underlines that UX can’t be performed in a vacuum. A team should function in two directions at once: one side should be focused on the users and your upcoming projects, the other should be relentlessly focused on making your business operate as smoothly as your products.
