A presentation Brian Kardell in OpenUI appealing to the possibility of the group taking up efforts toward defining how we can use real world usage data in the process of standardization, and why we should.

1. Usage Research?
Brian Kardell
Dec 9, 2021
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2. Historically
We have had very limited insights or data to help us.
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4. Simple premise
Actual data on "What developers are doing" is useful at
all stages
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5. Prioritizing efforts: A ton of people are trying to solve
X
Seeing the ways they're trying to do it, close to the
platform.
Looking at which of those are successful/not
Hypothesizing a solution / proof
Actual measurement of success
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7. HTTPArchive + Igalia
2018: Work out how to collect data...
2019: Tools to analyze data fast and cheap
2020: Begin to look at data across time
2021: Begin to formulate ideas to 'watch' and figure
out a process.
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8. We had to stop counting at 10k unique elements!
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9. HTTPArchive DOM Explorer
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10. 😬
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11. Successful and Unsuccessful
Forget custom elements for a minute, could we even
identify some kind of value for standard elements here?
Only 26 appear on 50% of pages
Only 46 appear on more than 5% of pages
Only 98 appear on more than 1%.
15% appear outside the top 200.
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12. In 2018 <video> appeared on "only" 3% of mobile
pages.
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13. This dataset has biases, and moves slowly.
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14. Other challenges: noise.
Wild things can make it in here from just common
cause. Eg. 10k websites with the same typo is not an
indication that that typo is good.
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15. Toward a theory?
We need a kind of unified theory here...
How we can be made aware of interesting new things
How we go from there to research it
Is some indication of "critical mass" defineable?
How long does that take?
How to avoid fads, blips, noise, stages of
development?
It's not simple. I've been trying.
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16. Maybe a useful thing to watch for is
new appearances?
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17. Maybe it is watching for
trends like grid
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18. Maybe we need manual categorization/classifications?
WOW popular!
Are
'sliders' 'carousels'? Sometimes? Maybe?
https://www.sliderrevolution.com/
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19. Why I want to do this...
This stuff is hard, it takes a long time and we have
limited resources. We need to optimize what we spend
time on and improve our sureity of success/value.
Will users benefit from it? Who? The most important
thing!
For users to benefit, authors have to use*
For authors to use, implementers have to implement
For implementers to implement, they need to believe
all of the above will pay off.
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20. To date, that's been largely based on gut feel and
thoughts about "the process".
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21. But there isn't a process
We've tried a lot of different things, each with their own
flaws.
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22. Was it worth it: The story so
far...
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23. About 30 are deprecated!... Whoops? What does that
even mean tho?
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24. About 30 are basically just div with a default style rule
that largely nobody really likes anyway. Nothing special
about them, their implementation took almost no time.
Most of these spent way too long in debate.
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25. 15 more are about sectioning or landmarks - a
shorthand for a simple aria role
<main>
vs
<div role="main">
They add no new value unless they increase correct
usage.
Did they? Was it worth it?
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26. About 15 are "kinda meaningful" but weak semantics
about text itself* (more on those later)
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27. In other words: More than half of them are just slightly
spicy divs.
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28. About 35 are where the majority of complexity live
links
iframes
audio, video
some "meta" ones (base, script, link, style, etc)
11 are about tables
14 about forms
slot/template
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29. Alternatively: HTML existed
before HTML
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30. That is how (most) language
actually works
Dictionaries recognize, they don't invent.
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31. Custom elements let us
make slang.
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32. My ideal is to use data to:
1. Determine what should we be studying
2. Figre out how can we study it optimally
3. Hypothesize, test and measure in the wild
4. Graduate and write it down.
5. Confirm?
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33. I would love it if we could figuring this out together.
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34. Join me?
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