Comment by KronisLV
4 hours ago
> Why not conduct a survey?
Large amounts of time before getting feedback, low percentage of people responding, not an accurate sample of all users (you will get signal from the loudest ones) and inaccurate data (biases in perception) instead of measurable reality. Not useless, but not a full replacement for telemetry.
> If it's a customer, why not reach directly to him?
Layers of indirection (and also the slowness of getting through them). You might not control the processes and approvals needed to do that in a non-startup environment. You will probably control enough of the app to add various technical solutions to aid you in collecting information.
> No one is talking about telemetry on your servers.
I am. Culture of not collecting client side data also often comes together with a culture of not collecting server side data properly either. Competent teams will evaluate both. My argument is that all of this data can meaningfully help in development and that other approaches don't replace it well enough.
> Large amounts of time before getting feedback […]inaccurate data (biases in perception) instead of measurable reality.
I think perception is more valuable because that is the only way of measuring frustration with the UX of the software. Something may be used a lot, but is painful to everyone.
> You might not control the processes and approvals needed to do that in a non-startup environment
In such environment, it’s often true that features are governed by third parties as well. You collect telemetry, but have no say in what user will get and experience.
> Culture of not collecting client side data also often comes together with a culture of not collecting server side data properly either
I strongly doubt that. We have way more tools for collecting data on servers than on doing telemetry.
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As a user, I essentially want my software to stay the same as long as possible. If I really need a new feature or am struggling with a bug, that’s when I contact the developers. If the developers are dogfooding their own software, new feature can be quite a delight especially when their profile is similar to yours.
But telemetry driven development is how you get features no one asked for.