Data is hugely important for product development. It’s easy to collect and, quite frankly, it looks great.  However like every tool, if used incorrectly, it can do more harm than good.  In this presentation, David shares experiments, mistakes, and lessons learned from his experience at Skyscanner, the travel search giant & one of the few European startups valued over $1B. David Pier is a senior product manager at Skyscanner who loves the hard problems in travel. In a previous life, David was a cell biology scientist where he cut his teeth in experimentation. 

1. Starting out with data
@drdavidpier

2. 13 Years ago

3. - Founded in 2003
- Over 800 employees
- 10 offices
- 60m UMVs
- 50m app downloads
- 30 languages

4. We like data

5. Why get started with data?
- Make better decisions
- Objective decision making
- Measure what users do rather than what they say they do
- Find problem areas in your product
- Understand your traffic
HH
HIghest Paid Persons Opinion

6. TDV - hippo

7. TDV - hippo

8. False Negatives

9. False Positives

10. Data is systematically biased

11. Quantitative data is not a substitute
for qualitative insight

12. Defaulting to hotels
• 20% increase
travellers booking
flights and a hotel
• Negligible impact on
flights metrics

13. “Please stop defaulting
me to Hotels I’m here for
flights!!”
“I do find it quite
annoying because
when I look for
Skyscanner what I
want to search for is
flights, not hotels.”

15. All data has assumptions

16. Non-airport city search
- Obvious problem
- Complex build
- Small use case
- Problem not seen
in our data

17. “Rubbish instrumentation implies
experienced guess is better than data led...”

18. Thankyou
@drdavidpier