Data lands when it's personal

“Our big theory,” says Zach Gemignani, CEO of Nashville, Tennessee-based Juice Analytics, “is that for data to land, it needs to be personalized before it’s forwarded to individuals.”

His theory and his new tool, Forward, defy the data industry’s dogma that naked, impersonal data carries all meaning.

Gemignani has been working with a large education-tech platform, a leader in their space — with 10,000 administrators using the platform for their schools and school districts, and 10 times as many teachers who are actually using it.

“We built a year-in-review thing for them,” said Gemignani. “But what they were interested in doing was taking that same data, curating it, and then passing it on to the teachers and being like, ‘Look, this is what you did. Congratulations. Thanks for all your work,’ or ‘This is what you did well or not.’” As the data passes through each successive hand, it’s reshaped — until each person receives data fitted specifically to them.

Such a system of personalization was a revelation. Gemignani and his business partner began to think about leaning into personalized data. So at each stop down the chain, the intermediate administrator would refine data for the next level down. For example, instead of having a data platform broadcast data to teachers, an administrator’s department data can be sent down one level to the next administrator or teacher.

People care most about data that is personal to them. One way it becomes personal is if it comes through somebody who holds a position in their life, such as a boss.

“ The data has to be so linked to a relationship that matters,” said Gemignani. “ You most care about data that is personal to you. But also one way that something can be personal to you is if it comes through from somebody that you care about, [who] holds a position in your life.”

The education-tech client’s concept has now grown into a product: It’s called Forward.

Though Juice’s Forward is a new product, it facilitates an ancient process that often occurs after some work meetings: small groups form and traipse off to coffee or just huddle in the office. In their post-game analysis, they chew over observations, speculate on motivations, make forecasts, and let their opinions evolve.

Gemignani compares the phenomenon to a modern ritual, Spotify’s annual playlist called Wrapped -- a list of each customer’s most-played songs over the past year. Why does Spotify bother? Not just because it shames non-Spotify listeners into joining. It’s because Wrapped gets compared among peers.

Data’s social aspect arose in 2012 with Scott Davis’s tool Lyza, which was grounded in human relationships. “A chart has no context at all,” he said. “The conversation is what’s really valuable.” (See “How Lyza stole the show at TDWI Las Vegas,” 3/10/2010, by Datadoodle).

With Lyza, Davis bet that data’s value is inseparable from the person handling it and the conversation around it. That’s what made it different. Unfortunately, that’s also what made it hard to sell to a world busy celebrating the opposite idea: cold, faceless data.

Forward’s personalized data can’t help but give people things to talk about.

Stories endure that evolve. Among educators, managers, sales people, and many other groups, data that’s turned over among stakeholders tends to be reinterpreted in light of the various viewpoints expressed.

 “I think we’re really onto something,” Zach said.