UX by the numbers: Scavenging data - Using public data to learn about your users

Geraint Jones from the Home Office 'Big data' is all the rage at the moment, and promises all kind of insights into human behaviour (or at least how to target more adverts...). As UX professionals we don't always have access to analytics and data warehouses, let alone the time and resource to go doing complex analyses with complex results. Fortunately, there is loads of juicy, public, data out there for the taking if you know where to look. I'm going to give some concrete examples, tools and techniques for doing 'guerilla' data capture and analysis, resulting in simple to understand deliverables and insights about your users.