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I haven't worked on a product that used analytics to drive feature development. What you wrote here sounds very naive to me. I might be completely wrong, but

by linza 7y ago

I haven't worked on a product that used analytics to drive feature development. What you wrote here sounds very naive to me. I might be completely wrong, but i assume if you have a large enough user base you would use telemetry only in an aggregated way, and then prioritize the majority of the user base. So I might totally be underrepresented but still have the same loss of privacy as everyone else. I also feel i always have the right to complain about a product, publicly and vocally (it's just a different channel for analytics/telemetry, imo). Much like product owners have the right to just change it remove features that break my workflow.

AmericanChopper 7y ago
What I have written here is based 100% on working with product teams who use analytics very competently to influence feature development (which is almost never driven by one single factor). > I might be completely wrong, but i assume if you have a large enough user base you would use telemetry only in an aggregated way, and then prioritize the majority of the user base. In some cases yes, but you need to get that aggregate data from somewhere. It’s also naive (and probably a bit arrogant) to assume that your requirements aren’t in fact well aligned with the majority of the user base. This is however a somewhat immature way of using analytics data. There’s plenty of incredibly valuable data you can get from peculiar and unpredicted usage patterns. Any product manager will tell you that most customers are quite bad at expressing what they actually want. A good product manager can gather a fair amount of insight from what they choose to complain about, but analysing the most immediately obvious trends really only gets you so far. You’ll often get the most insight from the rare customers who are able to concisely articulate their feedback, and those that are frustrated and ingenuitive enough to subvert your application to their will. For any motivated organisation, there’s countless ways to get insight out of their analytics. You’ve just described the lowest hanging fruit. > I also feel i always have the right to complain about a product Depending on where you live, you likely have the right to complain about anything you like. But if you want to prevent an organisation from analysing your usage of their service, then complaining about them not meeting the needs of your use case is hypocritical.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  It’s also naive (and probably a bit arrogant) to assume that your requirements aren’t in fact well aligned with the majority of the user base. No. In any high-dimensional space (in this case the dimensions are features used by a given user), the vast majority of the elements will be outliers in at least one dimension. Everyone has idiosyncrasies. It is arrogant to assume that everyone is the same as oneself.

by linza 7y ago

AmericanChopper 7y ago

What I have written here is based 100% on working with product teams who use analytics very competently to influence feature development (which is almost never driven by one single factor). > I might be completely wrong, but i assume if you have a large enough user base you would use telemetry only in an aggregated way, and then prioritize the majority of the user base. In some cases yes, but you need to get that aggregate data from somewhere. It’s also naive (and probably a bit arrogant) to assume that your requirements aren’t in fact well aligned with the majority of the user base. This is however a somewhat immature way of using analytics data. There’s plenty of incredibly valuable data you can get from peculiar and unpredicted usage patterns. Any product manager will tell you that most customers are quite bad at expressing what they actually want. A good product manager can gather a fair amount of insight from what they choose to complain about, but analysing the most immediately obvious trends really only gets you so far. You’ll often get the most insight from the rare customers who are able to concisely articulate their feedback, and those that are frustrated and ingenuitive enough to subvert your application to their will. For any motivated organisation, there’s countless ways to get insight out of their analytics. You’ve just described the lowest hanging fruit. > I also feel i always have the right to complain about a product Depending on where you live, you likely have the right to complain about anything you like. But if you want to prevent an organisation from analysing your usage of their service, then complaining about them not meeting the needs of your use case is hypocritical.

nitrogen 7y ago
It’s also naive (and probably a bit arrogant) to assume that your requirements aren’t in fact well aligned with the majority of the user base. No. In any high-dimensional space (in this case the dimensions are features used by a given user), the vast majority of the elements will be outliers in at least one dimension. Everyone has idiosyncrasies. It is arrogant to assume that everyone is the same as oneself.