Where do qualitative methods come into the conversation? Data-driven UX is better than gut feeling alone, but it's certainly not a replacement for qualitative

Where do qualitative methods come into the conversation? Data-driven UX is better than gut feeling alone, but it's certainly not a replacement for qualitative studies. They complement each other very well. In fact, when gut feeling is reinforced or produced by both qualitative and quantitative studies, you're in a good spot. If your (or better: the team's) intuition, deep interviews and data all point in one direction, then it's very likely to be the right one. By my experience, if you have support from two of the three sources (intuition—quantitative—qualitative), it's often good enough to pick a direction. However, picking a direction based on the _same two_ sources for every decision you make is not a good idea. The larger framework you employ should include all of them, even if smaller decisions are based on an "incomplete" perspective based on fewer information sources. Processes based solely on quantitative measures lean towards being reactive. You're viewing the future in the light of data from the past. Often, the past is a reliable predictor of the future. Sometimes, crucially, it's not. And sometimes, key behaviour is captured, but buried in the cheer volume of data. Qualitative studies add a predictive element since you are able to capture elements that you didn't think to measure for beforehand, or didn't think to look for in the data. Once captured, those elements can sometimes be measured quantitatively, possibly even retroactively.