Running notes from the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) and the Society for Newspaper Design annual conferences.

Jeffrey Veen, a founding partner of Adaptive Path and until last spring a Googler (he worked on Google Analytics and Gmail), talks about the power of data visualization to provide context for the user. He shows several examples. A .pdf of his presentation is here.

Veen urges designers to stay focused on the user experience, giving them tools to find their own stories in data. “Instead of us telling the stories, it’s us creating tools so they can discover the stories,” he says.

(BTW: he drew a full house in one of the larger presentation rooms here.)

Like many web-experience firms, Adaptive Path uses ethnographic techniques to determine what users need/want. He describes how those observations of “users in the wild,” are collected and analyzed — using paper transcripts of user interviews, highlighters and sticky notes on the wall. Ultimately, patterns emerge and unmet user needs become clear. “Where there is nothing, there is opportunity,” he says.