8 ms·

Delight.io (YC W10) Lets Developers See What Beta Users Are Doing In Their Apps

70 points by thomaspun 14y ago

thomaspun 14y ago
Here is a sample recording of Delight in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWv4iOF3-3Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWv4iOF3-3Q
liveink 14y ago
love it, even works for unity -> ios projects!
ammmir 14y ago
does anything similar exist for native mac apps? i'm building a music player and would love an integrated solution for tracking activity, crashes, etc.
- thomaspun 14y ago
  Not that I know of. There is http://silverbackapp.com http://silverbackapp.com but it does not do remote recording.
soup10 14y ago
Watching people use the app in person is super important for design decisions. You can see their reactions, ask them questions, and generally just get way more information than you could from a video capture. I could see tech like this being useful for submitting with bug reports or something? It's a hard sell though, seems a bit like overkill. You need to have decent testers that will use it, gotta deal with big video files, their's privacy concerns and capturing video will eat up cpu/resources and slow down the app. So again, potentially useful, but I don't think they've made a good case for why it's worth the hassle.
- hkyeti 14y ago
  We're implementing Delight in addition to usability groups and testers (and all the usual analytics). I won't replace having people give you their qualitative feedback, but being able see where real users get stuck in your UI is incredibly valuable...
- thomaspun 14y ago
  We are working on the first few things you mentioned. Thanks for the feedback. We definitely need to work on our messaging on the site.
eps 14y ago
I'm genuienly curious how many beta users would actually agree to being recorded this way? Unless it's founder's mom and best friends.
- polyfractal 14y ago
  People do this all the time on the web - see CrazyEgg or Inspectlet.
  - jamesjyu 14y ago
    and even more relevant is ClickTale.
steve8918 14y ago
This unfortunately sounds like something that can get people into a lot of trouble. It's a lot like the Carrier IQ debacle last year, where diagnostic software was left on some cell phones, and everyone went apeshit over it. All it takes is for a single customer to leave the software on there and have it get distributed to their customers, and it might turn into a big privacy scandal all over again, with not only the customer but this company being dragged in front of Congress. I would suggest adding code into your library that either forces a pop-up or gives a message saying that the app is currently using your software, so that it warns developers using your code that it's still activated, before they send it off the the App Store. The last thing you want is for this to get accidentally installed by unsuspecting end-users.
- iosnoob 14y ago
  This happens all the time on the web as best practice. Don't see how mobile is different, especially when they seem to have the privacy options built in.
  - dmix 14y ago
    Yep, Clicktale has been doing this for many years. I've never heard of them being dragged to court.
  - tijs 14y ago
    I'm not sure recording a video of the user going through her private data on an app is the same as seeing where she clicks on your website though. As far as i know services like Clicktale will record mouse interaction but not the actual data on the screen which makes a huge difference.
- klawed 14y ago
  I'm not discounting the potential for abuse here, but this is significantly different than Carrier IQ in that Delight.io will be limited to recording what a sandboxed app is doing unlike Carrier IQ's software which was running at the BIOS level and capable of collecting far more private data.
- 14y ago
jawngee 14y ago
Love this. I've been doing more and more "experiential retailing" stuff with iPads (and giant perceptive pixel panels in openframeworks/c++), so this would be awesome to see actual app usage happening in-store. How does it deal with recording iPad 3 retina size? Is there any impact to performance?
- thomaspun 14y ago
  Thanks! We always resize before recording. Yes there is some performance impact but users shouldn't see any noticeable UI impact as all capturing and encoding are done on a background thread.
  - tijs 14y ago
    Does this mean your not limiting use of delight to the testing phase but also allowing it to be used 'in the wild'?
nchlswu 14y ago
I've been looking for a solution like this for usability testing and the only comparable solution I found was screen recording that was restricted to jailbroken iOS devices which lead me to believe screen recording was one of those areas that was restricted by Apple. If this feature or a similar one was added to an app (turned on via user consent or otherwise), would Apple approve it? This is limited to one app and essentially another analytics plugin. Of course, this isn't a big deal if you're only testing a beta in restricted sessions (and the headline explicitly mentions beta users) but the potential for this in real world testing is huge.
- thomaspun 14y ago
  Current version of Delight uses all public API. There are already a few apps shipped with Delight. And we agree with you that being able to see real user interaction gives us tons of insights.
Girak 14y ago
great UX comes from feedbacks of test users. this definitely helps the designers to learn user behavior and make changes accordingly.
xoail 14y ago
I can see this fly when troubleshooting bug reports. But I would like to see a way to turn it on/off with user action. If a user emails me a bug report, I would like him/her to follow up steps to turn video 'on' so that it can capture the experience and turn it 'off' once done. And may be also include the user's identification so that I can filter out on the dashboard... congrats though!
- thomaspun 14y ago
  Thanks!. That's a great idea. It is possible with starting and stopping Delight manually. (http://www.delight.io/api/Classes/Delight.html#task_Starting%20and%20Stopping%20Recording http://www.delight.io/api/Classes/Delight.html#task_Starting...) You can also use [Delight setPropertyValue:forKey:] to include custom property to the recording so you can access them thru search on our dashboard. Custom property is any key value pair.
tijs 14y ago
This would be very much illegal in Europe if used beyond just the test phase of an app. And even during testing it could only used with active consent of the tester probably.

70 points by thomaspun 14y ago

Here is a sample recording of Delight in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWv4iOF3-3Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWv4iOF3-3Q

liveink 14y ago

love it, even works for unity -> ios projects!

ammmir 14y ago

does anything similar exist for native mac apps? i'm building a music player and would love an integrated solution for tracking activity, crashes, etc.

thomaspun 14y ago
Not that I know of. There is http://silverbackapp.com http://silverbackapp.com but it does not do remote recording.

soup10 14y ago

Watching people use the app in person is super important for design decisions. You can see their reactions, ask them questions, and generally just get way more information than you could from a video capture. I could see tech like this being useful for submitting with bug reports or something? It's a hard sell though, seems a bit like overkill. You need to have decent testers that will use it, gotta deal with big video files, their's privacy concerns and capturing video will eat up cpu/resources and slow down the app. So again, potentially useful, but I don't think they've made a good case for why it's worth the hassle.

hkyeti 14y ago
We're implementing Delight in addition to usability groups and testers (and all the usual analytics). I won't replace having people give you their qualitative feedback, but being able see where real users get stuck in your UI is incredibly valuable...
thomaspun 14y ago
We are working on the first few things you mentioned. Thanks for the feedback. We definitely need to work on our messaging on the site.

eps 14y ago

I'm genuienly curious how many beta users would actually agree to being recorded this way? Unless it's founder's mom and best friends.

polyfractal 14y ago
People do this all the time on the web - see CrazyEgg or Inspectlet.
- jamesjyu 14y ago
  and even more relevant is ClickTale.

steve8918 14y ago

This unfortunately sounds like something that can get people into a lot of trouble. It's a lot like the Carrier IQ debacle last year, where diagnostic software was left on some cell phones, and everyone went apeshit over it. All it takes is for a single customer to leave the software on there and have it get distributed to their customers, and it might turn into a big privacy scandal all over again, with not only the customer but this company being dragged in front of Congress. I would suggest adding code into your library that either forces a pop-up or gives a message saying that the app is currently using your software, so that it warns developers using your code that it's still activated, before they send it off the the App Store. The last thing you want is for this to get accidentally installed by unsuspecting end-users.

iosnoob 14y ago
This happens all the time on the web as best practice. Don't see how mobile is different, especially when they seem to have the privacy options built in.
- dmix 14y ago
  Yep, Clicktale has been doing this for many years. I've never heard of them being dragged to court.
- tijs 14y ago
  I'm not sure recording a video of the user going through her private data on an app is the same as seeing where she clicks on your website though. As far as i know services like Clicktale will record mouse interaction but not the actual data on the screen which makes a huge difference.
klawed 14y ago
I'm not discounting the potential for abuse here, but this is significantly different than Carrier IQ in that Delight.io will be limited to recording what a sandboxed app is doing unlike Carrier IQ's software which was running at the BIOS level and capable of collecting far more private data.
14y ago

jawngee 14y ago

Love this. I've been doing more and more "experiential retailing" stuff with iPads (and giant perceptive pixel panels in openframeworks/c++), so this would be awesome to see actual app usage happening in-store. How does it deal with recording iPad 3 retina size? Is there any impact to performance?

thomaspun 14y ago
Thanks! We always resize before recording. Yes there is some performance impact but users shouldn't see any noticeable UI impact as all capturing and encoding are done on a background thread.
- tijs 14y ago
  Does this mean your not limiting use of delight to the testing phase but also allowing it to be used 'in the wild'?

nchlswu 14y ago

I've been looking for a solution like this for usability testing and the only comparable solution I found was screen recording that was restricted to jailbroken iOS devices which lead me to believe screen recording was one of those areas that was restricted by Apple. If this feature or a similar one was added to an app (turned on via user consent or otherwise), would Apple approve it? This is limited to one app and essentially another analytics plugin. Of course, this isn't a big deal if you're only testing a beta in restricted sessions (and the headline explicitly mentions beta users) but the potential for this in real world testing is huge.

thomaspun 14y ago
Current version of Delight uses all public API. There are already a few apps shipped with Delight. And we agree with you that being able to see real user interaction gives us tons of insights.

Girak 14y ago

great UX comes from feedbacks of test users. this definitely helps the designers to learn user behavior and make changes accordingly.

xoail 14y ago

I can see this fly when troubleshooting bug reports. But I would like to see a way to turn it on/off with user action. If a user emails me a bug report, I would like him/her to follow up steps to turn video 'on' so that it can capture the experience and turn it 'off' once done. And may be also include the user's identification so that I can filter out on the dashboard... congrats though!

thomaspun 14y ago
Thanks!. That's a great idea. It is possible with starting and stopping Delight manually. (http://www.delight.io/api/Classes/Delight.html#task_Starting%20and%20Stopping%20Recording http://www.delight.io/api/Classes/Delight.html#task_Starting...) You can also use [Delight setPropertyValue:forKey:] to include custom property to the recording so you can access them thru search on our dashboard. Custom property is any key value pair.

tijs 14y ago

This would be very much illegal in Europe if used beyond just the test phase of an app. And even during testing it could only used with active consent of the tester probably.