Collecting User Statistics

[Heiko Tietze]

Hi Jaskaran,

most of these information are submitted when you access a web site, unless you actively use countermeasures. Therefore we know the percentage of users who stick to XP, what their average screen resolution is, and where they come from.

Much more interesting is how LibreOffice is being used. That starts with sessions, e.g. how often people open a module, how long is it open in average etc. And we are very interested in the actual interaction, meaning how often is "Clone Formatting" used, for example. Those data have been gathered during the project renaissance [1] and it was the basis for the recent menu and toolbar changes [2]. The data clearly needs an update.

Additionally to the overall statistics it would be interesting to go more into the details. As an example we could make decisions based on what function is followed most by an undo. If we go ahead with this approach the data storage becomes interesting. Consider a large number of users that submit all their interactions...

TDF did a tender in 2015 [3] but there wasn't too much interest in doing the work. But it's still a topic. And AFAIK we have something implemented. Some interactions (or just the summary?) is stored when a command-line switch is set. But don't remember exactly.

I would really appreciate if you would work on this topic.

Cheers,
Heiko

[1] https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Renaissance
[2] https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2016/01/22/way-down-in-the-libreoffice-menus/
[3] https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2015/02/24/tender-to-develop-and-incorporate-usability-metrics-collection-for-libreoffice-201502-02/

On 03/09/2017 10:10 AM, Jaskaran Singh wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Currently we collect user stats when someone downloads LO from our
> website. Now these may not be very useful since only very limited
> information is obtained by this method. Also, not everyone gets to
> participate in this because not everyone downloads LO. Some just get it
> preinstalled on their O.S while others get a copy through their friends.
> 
> I believe it's important for us to know about our users as deeply as
> possible so as to make informed choices. The information which we should
> be looking for is:
> 
> 1. Operating System, word size and kernel version
> 2. RAM and Cache amount
> 3. CPU and GPU specs
> 4. Opencl driver
> 5. Display specs
> 6. Country
> 7. Default Language
> 8. <anything_else?>
> 
> Now, obviously this is sensitive information and most users would
> disagree to share it. So we could introduce a way to anonymously share
> this data. We could enable client to use a proxy to share this OR enable
> this data to be sent over Tor (Onion Router). But again, most users
> wouldn't want that.
> 
> So I've found another way of doing this. Have a look at Rappor[1]. It
> introduces some random noise so that we are never sure of the data that
> client sends us. The statistics that we would get would be in terms of
> probability. For example, if a system has i3 processor, it will roll a
> dice to determine whether it should speak the truth or not. And by
> default we could have 80% (?) chance of speaking the truth. So if we get
> the data that user is running i3 processor, we are 80% sure that he/she
> is. And 20% chance that he/she is reporting wrong info. So aggregate
> that for a large number of users and we would get a rough trend.
> 
> We could also share this data in the forms of numbers and graphs(and
> other representations) on our website.
> 
> So this would work this way. Whenever someone installs or upgrades LO
> and starts LO for the first time, a dialog box appears asking for
> permission to share some data while also explaining how this would not
> compromise their privacy.
> 
> I'd like to know your views on this. And I'd like to implement this if
> none of you want to. I may apply for this as a project in GSoC. So
> please inform me if you can be a mentor for this project.
> 
> [1] https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/rappor
> 
> Regards,
> Jaskaran Veer Singh
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> LibreOffice at lists.freedesktop.org
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> 

-- 
Dr. Heiko Tietze
UX Designer
Tel. +49 (0)179/1268509

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