# S4 E3: Analogue: Anna Casey, Lead User Researcher, Analytics at Tableau

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2024-04-22
- **Format:** Video · 64 min watch · transcript available
- **Tools:** Tableau
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/s4-e3-analogue-anna-casey-lead-user-researcher-analytics-at-tableau
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1AAwB0un4k

In this Analogue episode of the Datum Podcast, Ravi and I sit down with Anna Casey, Lead User Researcher in Analytics at Tableau. Anna walks through her non-traditional route into UX research, how she landed at Tableau, what Tableau Labs really does, and how user research balances customer needs against sales and competitive pressures.

## Key takeaways

- Careers rarely follow a linear path; Anna moved from a marketing undergrad and a project/event management role into user research via a graduate programme at the University of Washington.
- Tableau Labs (now Showcase) is structured like a target: an outer ring of just-released features, a middle ring of alpha/beta feedback studies, and an inner ring of confidential concept research run by the user research team.
- Conference attendees skew towards power users and brand-new users rather than the 'average' user, so researchers must constantly account for that sampling bias when feeding findings back to feature teams.
- User research is about discovery and finding what's broken, which is a deliberately different conversation from a sales pitch; researchers translate findings differently for product teams versus leadership.
- Dashboard builders should surface and test their unwritten assumptions about end users early, mapping the whole workflow before and after the dashboard rather than starting at the build.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Podcast catch-up and intro
- 2:14 Introducing Anna Casey
- 4:37 A non-traditional path into UX
- 12:50 Discovering UX at grad school
- 16:34 Getting into the programme
- 24:50 Landing at Tableau
- 29:07 What is Tableau Labs
- 32:17 Power users versus everyday users
- 36:39 Sales pressure and Gartner signals
- 47:23 Process and advice for dashboard builders
- 57:26 Cognitive bias in research

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/s4-e3-analogue-anna-casey-lead-user-researcher-analytics-at-tableau

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena