User behavior data collection

[yurii-yu]

As a developer, I want know the general user behaviors so that I can improve the user experience.

It would be the best, if there is a way to observe the behavior of user. Then we know a lot aspects about the end-user experience.

for example

1. which commands do our users type most frequently?
2. which errors occur most frequently?
3. Is there any misunderstanding of the commands? then we can improve either the interface or the documents
4. which commands last for the longest time? is there any chance to optimize this?

[hohwille]

How would we store such data?
IMHO adding a database to IDEasy could be overkill. So add a JSON file? Will that be centrally for all projects in $IDE_ROOT/_ide?
If so how would we prevent file corruption due to concurrent invocations of IDEasy?

Can we already design the data-structure:

• «tool»:
  • «additional arguments»:
    • error
      • «error-codes»: «number-of-occurences»
    • success
      • «average-duration» (or better "total duration" + "number of runs" so we can build average with high precision and less rounding errors?)

Example:

{
  "mvn": {
    "clean install": {
      "error": {
        "1": 297
      },
      "success": {
        "duration": 12345678901234,
        "runs": 931
      }
    }
  },
 "install": {
    "mvn": {
       ...
    }
  },
  "update": {
    "": {
      ...
    }
  },
  ...
}

Are there best-practices on the web how to do such things? Maybe an existing library to reuse?

[hohwille]

I see manly problems here with GPDR and data-privacy.
If we just collect the data locally on the device of the user, we IMHO do not create value.
Most users would never use that data.
When we send such data to a server, we are easily violating data-privacy.

• The user would have to agree or deny sending such data
• The data would need to be anonymised

In the end I see a lot of problems with only little benefit.
What would we do if we knew that maven invocations across the planed take on average 3.4521 minutes?
Instead we have created simple surveys to ask users what tools they are using and what they are interested in:
https://github.com/devonfw/IDEasy/discussions/categories/polls

I will therefore close this issue as not planned.
We have more important and valuable things to do.