Hamel Husain recommends examining at least 100 data traces during user research as a concrete goal that reduces anxiety and gets people started. Once you hit that number, you can recognize theoretical saturation, the point where new traces stop revealing anything new.
What we tell people to do is to look at at least 100 traces. 100 is not a magic number. It's just a cognitive unblock that we tell people so that they can start looking at data without anxiety. Because people need some goal. If I just say, hey, just look at data and you trust me, you will figure it out, then you will know when to stop. People won't do it. So we give them a goal of 100. 100 traces. And then once they get closer to the 100, then we update them with more knowledge. There's a concept called theoretical saturation, which just means keep reading traces until you feel like you're not learning anything.
