W. Craig Tomlin

My career started in marketing and advertising in the 1980s prior to the dawn of the internet. The ‘80s were an awesome time to be in the tech world. Dinosaurs had just recently died out, and we were all reveling in our big hair and padded shoulders at the amazing new technology that allowed instantly sending documents anywhere at any time - known as the ‘fax machine.’ In the mid 1990s I transitioned into the internet world of marketing and advertising and eventually in the early 2000s moved into designing and optimizing email and web-based experiences using Human Computer Interaction and Usability (which today is often associated with the term “UX). I’ve worked with or for many big and small companies over the years including; AT&T, BlackBerry, CDC.gov, Dell, Disney, EMC, IBM, Prudential Insurance Company, Sprint, Verizon, Virgin Media, Vodafone, WellPoint Health Networks, Zurich Insurance Company and many, many more.Whether in the 1980s or today, traditional or internet-based marketing lives and dies by big data. Impressions, Cost Per Thousand Impressions, Number of Pieces Mailed, Number of Responses, Open Rate, Clicks, Click Through Rate, Average Time on Page, Leads, Sales and many, many more data points are the world of marketing. With marketing, big data is all about evaluating the behavior a marketing campaign is producing. When applied to the internet, I eventually came to call this type of engagement information “Behavioral UX data.”After becoming a Certified Usability Analyst in the early 2000s I transitioned into designing and optimizing web experiences. The big data numbers were augmented with qualitative data from usability and related UX research. The qualitative data typically comes from usability testing, task flow evaluations, card sorts, eye tracking studies, heuristic reviews, reverse tree testing, five second tests, and many other qualitative sources. I eventually referred to this data as “UX and usability testing data.” I eventually came to realize that I received the best results for website optimization when I applied both Behavioral UX data (the quantitative side) and Usability testing data (the qualitative data) together.I’ve worked with many teams over the years, and it’s been my experience that rarely will quantitative numbers nerds hang out with and use the methods of their qualitative UX geeks brethren. And I’ve observed that it’s also a rarity for the qualitative UX geeks to crunch and use big data the way their quantitative numbers nerd brothers and sisters do.And that’s sad. I realized that by bringing both quantitative and qualitative data together a much more comprehensive picture of ‘What is Happening’ and ‘Why it’s Happening' activity can be formed for websites or apps. And it’s this far more robust and comprehensive set of data that makes for a far more informed, and thus better approach to optimization. I call this combination of quantitative and qualitative data a ‘360 degree view’ into WHAT is happening (quantitative) data and WHY it’s happening (qualitative) data, which then informs a far more accurate analysis and set of optimization recommendations.When I'm not conducting UX optimization I enjoy time spent with my family, friends, 5 dogs and cat here in good 'ol Austin, Texas. I - er - my wife recently discovered a very fun sport called Pickelball which we enjoy playing often.