Hakuna MaDATA, what a wonderful phrase! It adorned the t-shirts of one of our best partners, Snowflake, at the 2018 Disney Data and Analytics Conference. It’s a fitting slogan not because of the “Lion King” themed event, but because it’s very true of what their technology offers.
As the joyful cartoon characters sang into my childhood, it means: “no worries.” With Snowflake, there are so many things that a database administrator doesn’t have to worry about, like:
- Indexing columns
- Creating partitions
- Tuning queries
- Scaling up for high demand
- Paying for unused computing power
We saw this problem-free philosophy in several other places during the two-day conference, making it one of the most enjoyable conference experiences I’ve had.
The Disney Experience
Disney’s Magical Express shuttled us between the conference and airport. This service will pick up your bags from baggage claim, bus you to the resort, then drop off your bags at the door of your room. That relieves guests from doing things like:
- Locating the right baggage claim
- Waiting for your bags in the carousel
- Lugging bags through an unfamiliar place
- Getting a taxi or rental transportation
Those things are simple and routine for frequent travelers like me, but having someone else do it all on my behalf was a refreshing experience. Showing Donald Duck cartoons instead of ads or a bad radio station on the way is how you get everyone to arrive with a smile.
Analytics Experience
We can apply this experience-oriented mindset to business analytics, too. There are certain things a dashboard consumer should not have to worry about, like:
- Where to find a certain piece of information
- Sharing insights with others
- How to get data needed for ad hoc questions
- Tuning dashboard performance
Like the cartoons one the bus, a nice animated loading image instead of the usual spinner gives everyone a more pleasant experience, even when it’s necessary to wait for what they need. That’s the kind of experience we think everyone should have when interacting with business data.
That’s exactly the approach we aim to take at InterWorks across all facets of the user experience. From something as big as setting up the right analytics infrastructure to something as small as a well-designed loading screen, our job is to worry about those things so you can focus on the business questions that really matter. The end goal? To make analytics as enjoyable as a trip to Disney World.
If this sounds like the kind of experience you’re looking for, we’d love to start a conversation.
