8 ms·

Maybe too many power user disabled the telemetry :)

by kenniskrag 6y ago

arkitaip 6y ago
Maybe but there are many other methods to figure out user needs and how to implement those needs in the best way.
- kenniskrag 6y ago
  Which ones (honest question)? I know gathering data with questionnaires. But asking people is a hard problem. "Do you want a faster browser", "do you want more choice in the UI" will lead to a all yes result. If you ask open questions you need much more time to answer the questionnaire and much more time to interpret the data.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Sit down with a user and watch how they use your product. This is a well known method for seeing how the product is being used, and what causes friction. No interpretation of user input required.
    - Vinnl 6y ago
      Mozilla does do that. It looks like that too doesn't seem to give them reason to preserve compact mode. (Though to be fair, UX research like that does indeed highlight what causes friction, not necessarily how many people are strongly attached to features like compact mode.)
  - arkitaip 6y ago
    Field studies and usability testing are some techniques that can be used when you want to discover novel needs and not just minmax existing implementations. Shit is hard because it takes tons of work and you have to have the organizational maturity to accept difficult changes.
    - rockdoe 6y ago
      If we do a field test of browser usage, do we expect the result to leave anything standing that allows typical power user workflows such as HN readers to work?
      - arkitaip 6y ago
        Sure, "just" target power users in your tests and have hypotheses at the right level of abstraction.
        rockdoe 6y ago
        Yeah, but how do you assign a weighting here if you don't have the telemetry? Maybe Firefox usage is really like 25% power users, but most of those disable Telemetry, causing the priorities to be all screwed up (See the ALSA example!).
  - fsflover 6y ago
    Questionnaires?
rockdoe 6y ago
Reminds me of this: https://chuttenblog.wordpress.com/2020/11/05/data-science-is-hard-alsa-in-firefox/ https://chuttenblog.wordpress.com/2020/11/05/data-science-is... tl;dr Telemetry indicates ALSA is no longer used. Firefox removes ALSA. Said Firefox version reaches release. Audio completely stops working for all users of some distros...that were yanking out the Telemetry.
- saurik 6y ago
  OMG, even if the telemetry were accurate, 2-3.5% of their users is a non-negligible number of people to use rip audio from... that's ridiculous!
  - rockdoe 6y ago
    2.5%-3% of the Linux users, not of the total ones. From https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware Linux users are about 3% of the userbase, so that's 0.1% of total users.
    - dotancohen 6y ago
      Jews make up about 0.1% of the world's population. If I were to operate a store and deliberately exclude Jews from being able to shop there, would you not defend them? They can choose to adhere to the teachings of a different prophet just like you can install a different distro.
      - dralley 6y ago
        This has got to be the single most ridiculous comparison I've ever seen on this website.
        dotancohen 6y ago
        I'd love to know why. Mozilla has made a change that has no other effect than excluding 0.1% of their userbase. No end users were benefited by the removal of ALSA support, but "only" 0.1% were excluded. I've put 0.1% into perspective.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
freeAgent 6y ago
I have telemetry disabled, but I would be happy to answer surveys for them. I've done so multiple times in the past. Surveys used to be the standard method for gathering user feedback, but they've fallen out of favor. Now everyone wants to do everything using telemetry and other automated data gathering. I wish surveys were utilized more often these days. Talk to your users!
- trog 6y ago
  I think surveys have fallen out of fashion because enough people have used telemetry or analytics now to know that what people tell you is often at complete odds to their actual behaviour :) The difference between users self-reporting how they use software and what they actually do when you observe them using it is often massive, even amongst technical users.
badsectoracula 6y ago
As they should, telemetry is just an euphemism for spyware, despite what apologists will claim.

Maybe too many power user disabled the telemetry :)

arkitaip 6y ago

Maybe but there are many other methods to figure out user needs and how to implement those needs in the best way.

kenniskrag 6y ago
Which ones (honest question)? I know gathering data with questionnaires. But asking people is a hard problem. "Do you want a faster browser", "do you want more choice in the UI" will lead to a all yes result. If you ask open questions you need much more time to answer the questionnaire and much more time to interpret the data.
- falcolas 6y ago
  Sit down with a user and watch how they use your product. This is a well known method for seeing how the product is being used, and what causes friction. No interpretation of user input required.
  - Vinnl 6y ago
    Mozilla does do that. It looks like that too doesn't seem to give them reason to preserve compact mode. (Though to be fair, UX research like that does indeed highlight what causes friction, not necessarily how many people are strongly attached to features like compact mode.)
- arkitaip 6y ago
  Field studies and usability testing are some techniques that can be used when you want to discover novel needs and not just minmax existing implementations. Shit is hard because it takes tons of work and you have to have the organizational maturity to accept difficult changes.
  - rockdoe 6y ago
    If we do a field test of browser usage, do we expect the result to leave anything standing that allows typical power user workflows such as HN readers to work?
    - arkitaip 6y ago
      Sure, "just" target power users in your tests and have hypotheses at the right level of abstraction.
      - rockdoe 6y ago
        Yeah, but how do you assign a weighting here if you don't have the telemetry? Maybe Firefox usage is really like 25% power users, but most of those disable Telemetry, causing the priorities to be all screwed up (See the ALSA example!).
- fsflover 6y ago
  Questionnaires?

rockdoe 6y ago

Reminds me of this: https://chuttenblog.wordpress.com/2020/11/05/data-science-is-hard-alsa-in-firefox/ https://chuttenblog.wordpress.com/2020/11/05/data-science-is... tl;dr Telemetry indicates ALSA is no longer used. Firefox removes ALSA. Said Firefox version reaches release. Audio completely stops working for all users of some distros...that were yanking out the Telemetry.

saurik 6y ago
OMG, even if the telemetry were accurate, 2-3.5% of their users is a non-negligible number of people to use rip audio from... that's ridiculous!
- rockdoe 6y ago
  2.5%-3% of the Linux users, not of the total ones. From https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware Linux users are about 3% of the userbase, so that's 0.1% of total users.
  - dotancohen 6y ago
    Jews make up about 0.1% of the world's population. If I were to operate a store and deliberately exclude Jews from being able to shop there, would you not defend them? They can choose to adhere to the teachings of a different prophet just like you can install a different distro.
    - dralley 6y ago
      This has got to be the single most ridiculous comparison I've ever seen on this website.
      - dotancohen 6y ago
        I'd love to know why. Mozilla has made a change that has no other effect than excluding 0.1% of their userbase. No end users were benefited by the removal of ALSA support, but "only" 0.1% were excluded. I've put 0.1% into perspective.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

freeAgent 6y ago

I have telemetry disabled, but I would be happy to answer surveys for them. I've done so multiple times in the past. Surveys used to be the standard method for gathering user feedback, but they've fallen out of favor. Now everyone wants to do everything using telemetry and other automated data gathering. I wish surveys were utilized more often these days. Talk to your users!

trog 6y ago
I think surveys have fallen out of fashion because enough people have used telemetry or analytics now to know that what people tell you is often at complete odds to their actual behaviour :) The difference between users self-reporting how they use software and what they actually do when you observe them using it is often massive, even amongst technical users.

badsectoracula 6y ago

As they should, telemetry is just an euphemism for spyware, despite what apologists will claim.