The Analyst’s Hierarchy of Needs: Grounded Design Principles for Tailored Intelligence Analysis Tools

Intelligence analysis involves gathering, analyzing, and interpreting vast amounts of information from diverse sources to generate accurate and timely insights. Tailored tools hold great promise in providing individualized support, enhancing efficiency, and facilitating the identification of crucial intelligence gaps and trends where traditional tools fail. The effectiveness of tailored tools depends on an analyst’s unique needs and motivations, as well as the broader context in which they operate. This paper describes a series of focus discovery exercises that revealed a distinct hierarchy of needs for intelligence analysts. This reflection on the balance between competing needs is of particular value in the context of intelligence analysis, where the compartmentalization required for security can make it difficult to group design patterns in stakeholder values. We hope that this study will enable the development of more effective tools, supporting the well-being and performance of intelligence analysts as well as the organizations they serve.