My first months as an Human Data Interaction Consultant at Bright Cape

It’s been a couple of months since Gamze kick-started her career at Bright Cape. She is grateful to turn out as a Human Data Interaction Consultant (HDI) after completing her Data-Driven Design Master’s Degree in Utrecht. We caught up with her to learn firsthand how her experiences have been so far. Please read on as Gamze walks us through her journey as she talks about HDI and what it entails.

My journey to Human Data Interaction (HDI) Consultant started with meeting Lindsey, Manager Human Data Interaction The meeting was about getting to know each other’s expectations in a very friendly atmosphere. I like how Lindsey asked me questions to learn about me, my motivations and how I display the importance of the user experience design to a client. After the meeting, I wanted to be involved in Bright Cape’s HDI team because of the friendly talk with Lindsey and the clarity of the company culture. The attraction point was the data-driven and user-centered mindset in the entire company, which was a perfect match for my master’s degree.

What is Human Data Interaction (HDI) and how do we work?

In a nutshell, HDI is a nice mixture of user experience design & research, data, and psychology. As an HDI team, we help businesses use their data for their benefit according to their strategy.  We make data understandable to people and use data to create the right products.

How does this process start? At first, we sharpen the problem space, what needs to be optimized? What does the customer want to achieve with this, in other words identifying the added value. While understanding the business problem we also identify the people involved, and with this, we define and understand the user problem, we always follow the user-centered design approach. This means we design solutions for the benefit of not only the organization but also the users.

How does it continue? We work in an iterative design process where we involve a variety of research and design techniques such as customer journey mapping, usability testing, user interviews, stakeholder mapping, and prototyping. All of these techniques are tailored to the project’s current needs. We design user-friendly data solutions for complex data structures and work closely with domain experts and analysts.

The unique part of our work is, that we ensure we build user-centric design solutions for our clients and then check if they are ready to go without us. I believe this is the most significant part of our strategy: “we bring, build and design processes, business solutions, and user experiences”.

“We do not only work on client projects but we also work together. We have fruitful internal meetings weekly. We always collaborate, and we give constructive feedback to each other because we give value to communication, co-creation, and team building.“

– Gamze Bozkurt, Human Data Interaction Consultant

What do you expect when you start as an HDI consultant?

I am totally sure, it will be a journey full of growth opportunities for anyone who is eager to learn. For example; during my first months, I was working in an internal product development stage where I improved not only my design thinking abilities but also my analytical way of thinking. When starting in a new company and kicking off a new project, it can be challenging sometimes to understand the stakeholders’ expectations at first. The way how I approach these kinds of challenges is to structure the project requirements clearly according to the stakeholders’ expectations by asking the right questions at every stage of my project.

How does it feel working at Bright Cape?

Beyond the job itself, Bright Cape is an interesting data science consultancy company where you feel almost like the real owner rather than an employee and where there is room to explore your own entrepreneurial ambitions. When you become more and more entrepreneurial, your vision expands gradually, and there is a great opportunity for self-development. The Bright Capers are also naturally talented team players which I immediately realized in the first month. We continuously help each other, we give feedback and we are fed by our knowledge sharing and lunch lecture sessions. I think these are the reasons why Bright Cape is good at making the team grow. And most importantly: people are happy at Bright Cape!

Thinking about a possible career as a Human Data Interaction Consultant?

Get in touch with me. I am happy to answer any questions that you might have to help you make the right decisions regarding your career path. And who knows, we might even become colleagues.