Another way you can gather insights is from analytics.

This can be slightly different depending on where you work. Some companies will have a robust internal analytics infrastructure. Some companies will leverage outside tools. And some companies will have little to no analytics.

My suggestion to you as a designer is to take a solid day and to see if you can get someone to walk you through what is available. Have them show you how to run your own queries and discover your own insights.

This day spent learning the ins and outs of your company’s analytics will pay dividends down the road. Being able to pull up your own reports and dig into data around various flows and events will become a resource to you as a designer that you can apply to any project that you work on.

Say for instance, you’re working on your apps onboarding flow. Prior to mocking up a single idea, you can use analytics to pull up a funnel of new user signups. Doing so will help highlight the screens that are performing well and those where customers seem to be struggling.

Once you’ve identified a screen that has friction. You can then come up with ideas around polishing up that particular screen. You can then compare the funnel numbers before and after you make changes to see what kind of impact they’ve had.