Don Q's LadyData

Whoa, incredible responses from the Tumblr community to this! With 311 notes on this item at the time of this writing, it’s by far the most-spread single item we’ve put onto the interwebs.

The majority of the feedback seemed to be quite positive, though some people called into question the validity of the data, the source and the composition of our sample set, and the goal of our effort. And to be sure, we love all the feedback, including the Yeas and the Nays.

In September, we set out to survey a large, growing sample of women for their thoughts, specifically thoughts that could be useful to men. DonQ’s “real” products are a set of delicious rums, and the LadyData digital product is meant to supplement that, and market our drinkable products through what we think is a fun and useful service.

It should be noted, however, that while we have a pretty respectable sample size—more important decisions have been made with more spurious data, to be sure—the whole project is meant to be interesting and fun.

We received two excellent questions from Maria Sciarrino (@mariatsciarrino on Twitter) about the project. Thanks, Maria! Here’s a stab at the answer to your queries.

We gathered participants from existing lists of people that we know enjoy participating in these types of projects, through posts on Craigslist, and through a private group on Facebook. And in terms of avoiding bias, we didn’t make an enormous effort to do so. LadyData isn’t meant to be definitive, it’s meant to be an entry point to being smarter about relationships and life. It’s not a scientific study by any means, but we hope it’s interesting nevertheless.

mikehudack:

youmightfindyourself:

The Female Perspective - A Modern Guide to Dating

We’re loving our new LadyData feature on ValetMag. They do a great job with infographics, and we were happy to supply the data. Be on the lookout for Day 2, tomorrow. Nice job, gents!

We added a new arm to the LadyData movement today, with something we like to call MiniData. We created a set of nifty banners for some of our favorite sites that show individual findings from the project.

MiniData can be seen on Kottke.

Swiss Miss.

Daring Fireball.

Design Observer.

37signals.

And many more. Enjoy!

Some new questions were posted last week. From here on out, we’re going to post new data-sets on Mondays. Here are the hot new sets, from the Style and Dating categories:

1. Who should be wearing sexy underwear?
2. Should I wear a blazer with my jeans?
3. Do women notice when a man has a nice wallet?
4. When should a guy use gel in his hair?
5. When are athletic socks acceptable?
6. How should we celebrate our one-night-stand?
7. If a girl waxes, a guy should trim. True or false?
8. What’s the acceptable level of ex-interaction?
9. Who pays for contraception?
10. How intensely do you Facebook stalk?

And as usual, we’ll be posting our take on these questions as we discover interesting angles on the data.

Average number of dates before the “invite-up”, as reported by ladies of differing hair colors.

HappyHoured, if you haven’t yet downloaded it, is a wonderful little iPhone app (iTunes) and crowd-powered website that helps people find sweet happy hours near them. It’s free and absolutely worth a download.

We were happy to help them with their launch, along with Tito’s Vodka, by providing some funds and some free booze in exchange for some ad space and chatter on the social webs.

Speaking of that ad space, we were thinking…”What better to show than some of our nightlife-related data?” So, friends, an early preview of the data:

As usual, these are all based on real surveys of real women.

Here’s how they look in the site:

And in the app.

Enjoy! Hope you all find these useful.

The Frisky seems to love us. Wonderful, unintended side-effect.

This one is a smidge controversial. And if we’re being honest, the survey should have included a “+20%” option. But no matter how you shake it, it appears that there’s a lot of dishonesty out there. After all, one could interpret the last answer to mean that everyone, regardless of gender, lies.

Which is sort of sad.

And sort of appropriate for Friday the 13th, right?

It turns out, generally, the ladies prefer a guy that is in some way larger than they are. And while this isn’t exactly rocket surgery, it’s still pretty interesting. …Especially if you filter the ladies by location. The sample size is pretty low after the filter, but nevertheless, it appears that skinny boys do better in the northeastern states.

We’re posting some new content today to LadyData. We’ve gathered responses from 95 ladies to the following questions; each lady selected an answer from a multiple-choice list, and each answer comes with some commentary. Should be interesting.

1. Do you Google-search your date before meeting up with them?
2. When should sexual history come up as a topic of conversation?
3. What kind of underwear is best on a guy?
4. What’s the sexiest kind of facial hair on a guy?
5. How long should you date before asking her on a weekend away?
6. Does my collection of comic books count toward my knowledge of art and culture?
7. What type of body is best for a guy?
8. What should be “manscaped”?
9. How truthful are girls about their sexual history?
10. Where should mobile phones be during a dinner date?
11. What are the rules for tipping a waiter?
12. How do you feel about stories including my ex?
13. Can I go to a strip club with my buddies?

We’ve got more on the way for next week. And if you’ve got questions, we’ve got 100-ish women who would love to share their opinions. Care to ask them a question?