As I just opened Eclipse for the first time on my new MacBook Pro, it asked me whether I want to turn on the Usage Data Collector. Citing from the Eclipse user preferences:
The Usage Data Collector collects information about how individuals are using the Eclipse platform. The intent is to use this data to help committers and organizations better understand how developers are using Eclipse.
Here is some more information to be found:
I just figured that this is a fine example how more and more organizations are interested in collecting and analyzing such process information to make products better — faster, more tailored to user needs, more reliable, etc. As long as individuals trust the collecting organization, I guess, the willingness to share such data is pretty high, because the users (even if they do not actively participate in the development) have the feeling to somehow have contributed to create a better product.
Comments (1)
It would be interesting to know more about the percentage of people that actually agree to send their data via the UDC. The only number I could find is that 1500 individuals have participated over a period of four months up to June 2008.
Another good example is the ingimp project, where an instrumented version of the open source software GIMP was created. This instrumented software collects certain types of event-based usage data, such as the commands that are used, user interface events, and users’ own (optional) descriptions of their tasks. The resulting data set is made publicly available and serves as a basis for usability improvement efforts in the open source community.
I like the fact that they care about privacy and make very clear what kind of data is recorded. After all, you can download it and look yourself!