[tomboy-list] Collecting usage data

[Raymond]

On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 06:32 -0700, Sanford Armstrong wrote: 

> * Panel applet or system tray?
> * "Create New Note" or select text and click "Link"?
> * What percentage of notes link to other notes?
> * What plugins/addins do people actually use?  How much do they use them?
> * What percentage of notes use rich text features?
> * etc
> 
> Does anyone have ideas for how to collect this sort of data?  Perhaps
> Novell can do usability testing, but even that is a pretty small
> sample.  People on this list are probably a skewed sample as well.
> Internet surveys always get gamed, too.

My opinion?

People who speak up are always the users you want to satisfy... those
are the people who 
wiki your application, those who submit bug reports, those who ask
questions on forums and mail lists.

"Other" "anonymous" users are satisfied with the existing product or are
not using it at all. When one of 
these "other" users sees a product taking a direction which they
dislike, they do one of two things:

- they complain (which is good and means they have become of the first
type of user, those who speak up)
- they leave (these are the unsatisfiable users who wouldn't allow or
submit anon usage data anyway).


> I think it would be great if we could collect anonymous usage data

[snip] 

> collection.  Also, is this evil?

I personally think that this is evil except in the most complex
situations... in this particular situation, being 
that tomboy is not widely used (this is not in anyway a knock on it's
value), and I'm talking orders of 
magnitude in comparison with other applications, I would consider it
"not ok" to collect usage data. 

Browsers, for example? Some of them I would suggest that it's ok to
collect usage data. Why? because there are so 
many "concerns" to deal with, security, standards implementations,
etc...

Collecting anon data takes an application to a level where most users
would have to decide, are the reasons 
good enough? They can accept a certain level of "interpretation" of
their behaviours, but it has to be for a very 
good reason.

My usage report:
    - Project tracking, lots of links... Top level parent, daily linked
in note, with file links where appropriate, lots of time stamps.

    - Submitting project reports. Export to html (custom xsl style
sheet) and either place in an online CMS, or email... 
(send by email is the next thing I would work on)

    - General note taking, TODO lists, basic reminders 
(real reminders are for PIMs like Evo, or Calendering apps, etc... I
wouldn't go this direction, but perhaps integration with existing ones
might be cool...)

    - planning, development planning (like talking to oneself, without
the voice...)
    - Searching the content, very useful, I like the integration with
beagle.

Wish List:
    - System Tray++
    - Rich Text++ (particularly tables, not much more...)
    - Better indenting control, multi-line select -> indent, unindent

Coolest plugin/addition I can think of, but don't see it coming anytime
soon?
    - tables, plus it be possible to reference table cells and create
simple calculations (+ - / *, nothing more) à la "spread sheet", but
ultra simple... 

My two cents,

Raymond Auge <rauge at liferay.com>
Software Engineer
Liferay, Inc.
Enterprise. Open Source. For Life.



Raymond Auge <rauge at liferay.com>
Software Engineer
Liferay, Inc.
Enterprise. Open Source. For Life.


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