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Comment by davisr | Hacker News Reader

  > otherwise they don’t know how to improve the product.

Or, you know, they could just ask customers how the product is working for them. Automated data collection is a huge, huge problem and stampedes over civil liberties. We ought to control our computers, and not be controlled by them, which is why I vigorously oppose all non-free (proprietary, non libre) software.

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I send error data from all of my web and mobile apps. We catch a LOT of bugs that we don't see in test due to browser differences or state differences. While this may be invasive, it's necessary to deliver a good customer experience.

I believe a gradient exists here. That's why we don't collect any usage information, but error reporting is something I've found life changing especially given how fragmented the experience is across different browsers and devices.

I see your point here, and then I count the number of times I have responded to survey requests or participated in nielsen ratings surveys, even when paid to do it.

That number is zero.

I agree, most companies conduct feedback in a completely impersonal way. I tell my customers that my software doesn't contain any tracking or telemetry, and that human-to-human feedback (direct email) from users is the only way I can know of problems. I also make it very clear that I am open to all kinds of feedback. This is great because I get bug reports directly, can understand how people are using the program in their workflow, and can contextualize feature requests and build solutions that fit for everyone.

Users like this because they are actually being listened to by the software's author, there is no overhead to fixing problems, and they aren't being shoehorned into a database.

Of course direct feedback is good. But it's not scalable and you risk of running a very real case of bias towards whoever you're asking. Running telemetry on your software is not "evil" or "stampedes over civil liberties". You can most certainly run telemetry in a way that protects people's privacy and gives you insightful data on how your users operate and interact with your software. I know this, I've worked on an analytics service serving hundreds of millions of users. I'm building right now a feature-flagging/configuration/core metrics service that does exactly that: preserve user privacy and allow developers to learn about their users (not easy and there are some trade offs, like accuracy).

Asking users how they use a product and measuring it results in dramatically different data.

I can't count the number of times I have seen a new product or bit of software and though immediately "That sounds like a horrible idea, how useless" And then later eventually trying it and liking it.

Asking customers what they want can be useful sometimes but mostly people don't know what they want other than a slightly improved version of the thing they already like.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” -Henry Ford

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