In the era of big data, it is imperative to assist the human analyst in the endeavor to find solutions to ill-defined problems, i.e. to “detect the expected and discover the unexpected” (Yi et al., 2008). To their aid, a plethora of analysis support systems is available to the analysts. However, these support systems often lack visual and interactive features, leaving the analysts with no opportunity to guide, influence and even understand the automatic reasoning performed and the data used. Yet, to be able to appropriately support the analysts in their sense-making process, we must look at this process more closely. In this paper, we present the results from interviews performed together with data analysts from the automotive industry where we have investigated how they handle the data, analyze it and make decisions based on the data, outlining directions for the development of analytical support systems within the area. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016.