{"id":534,"date":"2011-08-30T08:48:29","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T15:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/?p=534"},"modified":"2011-08-29T15:59:18","modified_gmt":"2011-08-29T22:59:18","slug":"usage-data-tells-you-what-happened-not-why-it-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/30\/usage-data-tells-you-what-happened-not-why-it-happened\/","title":{"rendered":"usage data tells you what happened, not why it happened"},"content":{"rendered":"

A blog post that ends with “Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody” is going to get quite a lot of mileage.\u00a0 I lost count of how many times I saw it go by on my twitter stream.\u00a0 Laurie Voss<\/a> posted a response<\/a> to Steven Sinofsky’s MSDN blog post about the improvements to Windows Explorer<\/a> that are coming in Windows 8.<\/p>\n

Voss takes a look at the data that Sinofsky posted about the usage of various commands in Windows Explorer, and is less than impressed at how they’ve applied this data to the new design of Windows Explorer.\u00a0 He has two major complaints.\u00a0 First, he complains that even by Microsoft’s own data, many of the commands that are elevated in the new Windows Explorer design are ones that aren’t commonly used.\u00a0 Second, he complains that Microsoft’s data says that the menu bar within the Windows Explorer is very infrequently used, so what’s the point of doing it at all?<\/p>\n

Both of these complaints are a very common misuse of usage data.\u00a0 Usage data only tells you what happened in the past.\u00a0 It doesn’t tell you why it happened, nor does it tell you what will happen in the future.\u00a0 Furthermore, usage data can often not be broken down very far, so we don’t know what types of users and usages it represents.\u00a0 I’ve written about this before in my blog post about the usage fallacy<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Usage data is directional. It doesn’t tell you what<\/em> action to take, it tells you that there might be<\/em> an action to take.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This certainly applies here.\u00a0 For example, Voss is upset that few users use the menu bar, instead using contextual menus.\u00a0 Do we know why they don’t use the menu bar?\u00a0 Are there commands that they’re more likely to use in the menu bar?\u00a0 Is there a discoverability problem (that is, are there commands that users would like to use but can’t find them)?\u00a0 None of these are questions that can be answered by usage data.\u00a0 To answer these questions, you need to use other research methodologies.<\/p>\n

The true irony of Voss’s lack of understanding of how to appropriately apply usage data is found in another recent blog post of his about the need for statisticians<\/a>, in which he says the following:<\/p>\n

The whole web industry is accumulating vast quantities of data and storing it, magpie-like, as if it has intrinsic value, aided by ever-falling prices for storage. But the data isn’t valuable. It doesn’t mean anything until somebody who knows what they’re doing looks at it, sifts through it, and produces a tool that lets others use it to draw valid and useful conclusions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He’s right: data isn’t valuable until someone who knows what they’re doing looks at it and helps draw valid and useful conclusions.\u00a0 It’s always amusing when bloggers officially enter the realm of self-parody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A blog post that ends with “Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody” is going to get quite a lot of mileage.\u00a0 I lost count of how many times I saw it go by on my twitter stream.\u00a0 Laurie Voss posted a response to Steven Sinofsky’s MSDN blog post about the improvements to … Continue reading usage data tells you what happened, not why it happened<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":537,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions\/537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}