Labs/Test Pilot/WeeklyMeetings/2009-10-01
TP Basic Panel study
aka: A Week in the Life of a Browser
Goal:
To collect basic user/usage data that may help inspire decision-making, recheck feature assumptions, or monitor product performance for your project.
Duration:
5 days (?) per 30-day period (cover both weekdays and weekends. Could also be randomly picked 5 days? or after a big release?)
(Duration will be defined when we finalize what data need to be collected.) (To reduce the server pressure, we need to unbind the submission date. )
Potential metrics:
Browser configuration (one-time metadata which can go along with any other data upload):
- OS version
- Firefox version
- Firefox language/local (e.g. Firefox en-US)
- Amount of Add-ons
- What add-ons (with their respective version number) are active (could be used to correlate memory data to find add-ons using much memory?)
- Number of tool and status bar items (min/max/avg)
- Search bar (enabled/disabled/which search engine)
- Other tool bars installed
Product performance (collected as a series of values over time):
- time taken to launch browser
- time taken to open new tab
- average time to draw a page
- amount of memory available (incl. OS)
- amount of memory used (average and max should be stored)
Browsing behaviors (interacts with product performance metrics):
- how long FF is running
- how often FF gets restarted (user forced? add-on update?)
- number of open tabs/windows
- count how many pages have been visited/ how many are opened during a session
- preferred Tab-Add-ons (i.e. tab view on top or on which side (Tab-Kit))
- Search methods: search box, quick search? - <Aza>
- Frequency and "average time open" of various non-browser windows: JS Error Console, Preferences, Library, Add-ons manager, etc.
Browser UI (some subset of these could be piggybacked on other tests):
Examples:
- Width of the address bar (in relation to the toolbar and its space when shared with other items.)
- Tool bar icon sizes (small or large)
- Common button order (default navigation buttons)
- Whether status bar / bookmark bar / etc are shown or hidden
(To ensure the successful submission to our server, we need to estimate the approximate overall data volume for submission.)