Summary An Intake Form for Data Requests — Haystacks by Caitlin Hudon www.caitlinhudon.com
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Caitlin Hudon has created an Intake Form for Data Requests to streamline the process of requesting data from Haystacks, providing users with an efficient way to quickly gather the necessary information.
Key Points
- An intake form is a useful tool for streamlining data requests and gathering context.
- Questions should filter out lazy asks while not discouraging requests.
- Consider the audience for the deliverable and if it needs context for a boardroom.
- Templating is key when creating an intake form.
- Caitlin Hudon has created an Intake Form for Data Requests to help users quickly gather information from Haystacks.
- Having a uniform, automated way of gathering requests helps track and triage them more effectively.
Summary
309 word summary
Subscribe to get new posts delivered to your inbox. I recently shared my experience with motherhood in tech and my thoughts on Stanford's COVID-19 Vaccination Algorithm. When creating an intake form, templating is key. Ask questions to reduce lazy asks and ensure your work delivers value. Consider the audience for the deliverable and if it needs context for a boardroom. GitLab's Visualization / Dashboard Request has useful ideas for iterating on forms. A little friction goes a long way - add enough to filter out lazy asks, but not so much that requests are discouraged. A good rule of thumb is that if you find yourself asking the same analysis-framing question three times, it's a good candidate for your intake form. Our data team formed in January and needed a uniform way of gathering data requests from across the company. To meet this need, we created an intake form. We modeled our intake form after our design team's, and made filling it out the first step to getting a request on our radar.
The form is designed to gather as much context as possible. It includes questions about the data needed, the 'real' question being asked, any similar work in progress or already completed, and the planned decision or action. Knowing how the data will be used informs the design of the analysis from start to finish.
We posted links to the form in Confluence and Slack, and requests are sent to my inbox as the team's lead and manager. Having a more uniform, automated way of gathering requests has helped us track and triage them more effectively. Caitlin Hudon has created an Intake Form for Data Requests. The form is designed to streamline the process of requesting data from Haystacks, a cloud-based data platform. It helps users quickly gather the information Haystacks needs to provide the requested data.