How the Index Actually Works
In my last post, I told you where the Data Human Index came from. Today I want to show you how it actually works.
The Index scores any brand’s data experience across five dimensions. Each one is scored 0 to 4 using only what you can observe from the outside, so no inside access or guesswork is needed. Just a laptop, a browser, and about twenty minutes.
Here is the scale
The five dimensions combine to give a total out of 20. Here is what that total means:
Most brands land somewhere in the middle. That isn’t a failure, it’s a starting point.
What scoring looks like in practice
Imagine a brand you use every day. You open their website for the first time, in a private browser window so you see exactly what a new visitor sees.
Can you find the privacy policy? You count the clicks. Three. It’s there, but not easy to find.
A cookie banner appears. The Accept button is large and blue but the Decline option is grey, smaller, and tucked into a corner. The choice exists but it doesn’t really feel like a choice.
You paste the opening section of the privacy policy into Hemingway Editor. It scores Grade 14, which is University level. Most people reading it would need to read it twice just to follow the sentence structure.
You search for “delete my account” and it takes four clicks to find the right page. A self-serve option exists, but it’s not easy to use.
You find the support page in two clicks. There’s a live chat option and a human responds.
Just a brand doing some things reasonably well and others poorly, and now you can see exactly where and why.
That’s what the Index is for. Not to shame brands, but to make the gap between promise and experience visible, specific, and measurable.
I’ve already run Facebook and TikTok through the Index but before I share the scores, I’m curious — what would you guess? Which brand do you think scores higher overall, and which dimension do you think produces the most surprising result?
Have a guess before you look. Then I’ll show you what the data actually says.