We talk a lot about human-centred design, but we rarely define what “human” actually means. If we want data and design to feel human, we need a way to measure it with the same clarity we measure everything else. So I built the Data Human Index. It’s a simple five-dimension model that helps you understand the journey from the perspective of the person moving through it. Transparency Do people understand what is happening and why? Consent Do they have a real choice and is that

Clicks. Scrolls. Views. Conversions. None of them tell us whether the experience was transparent, clear or supportive in any meaningful way. A click might mean understanding, but it might also mean uncertainty. A conversion might show completion, but it might also mean the person pushed through friction to get there. Our dashboards treat every action like success, but success for who? Most analytics frameworks measure behaviour but not the quality of the experience. They can

We talk a lot about big data, but most human moments are actually small. A pause before clicking, a scroll back up, a quick tab close, a search that leads nowhere. These tiny behaviours often say more about what someone is feeling than any form or dataset ever could, yet most systems skim right past them. They optimize for actions, not intentions. They reward what is easy to count instead of what is meaningful to understand. And when we overlook those small signals, we miss t

Most companies genuinely believe they design their websites for people. They hire behavioural scientists, study user journeys and optimize flows based on what people tend to click, skip or avoid. The intention is to make the experience feel intuitive and to support the path to conversion, and in many cases it does exactly that. But there is an interesting tension that keeps coming up for me. Most modern digital experiences are built around human behaviour, not human experienc

We don’t need more data. We need data that listens. We talk a lot about collecting data, but not enough about listening to it. Most systems today are built to record clicks, scrolls, purchases, and likes, but not to understand what those signals actually mean. They count, but they don’t always interpret. That’s when data stops listening. It’s the reason a customer who just cancelled a subscription still gets an upsell email, or why you keep seeing ads for something you alread

Maybe the better question is how it feels when it doesn’t. That uneasy moment when a brand seems to know a little too much, or when a recommendation feels robotic instead of relevant. These are signs that something is missing in the way data is being used. Too often, data is treated as a shortcut to results instead of a bridge to understanding. The goal becomes efficiency, not empathy, and that’s where the disconnect happens. For me, making data feel more human means designin

Most of my career has been about making data more meaningful. Not just for marketers and businesses, but for the people behind the numbers. From my PhD research on music and emotion, to the platforms I helped build that turned listening habits into shared emotional experiences, to later using social data to understand personality and motivation in real time, I have always believed that behaviour is the most honest signal we have. And that behind every signal is a person. Howe