The document presents insights from Philip Tellis's presentation at UX Fest 2013, focusing on user experiences and performance measurement in web applications. It discusses the significance of real user data, the intricacies of measuring web performance, and introduces the Boomerang JavaScript library for capturing performance metrics. The talk emphasizes how users' expectations for performance have evolved, influencing their engagement with websites.

1. • Philip Tellis
• @bluesmoon
• philip@bluesmoon.info
• SOASTA
• boomerang
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2. RUM Distillation 101
Philip Tellis / philip@bluesmoon.info
UX Fest 2013 / 2013-10-01
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3. Did you know that most Rum comes from the
Caribbean?
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4. But the largest selling Dark Rum in the world is
Old Monk
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5. Jean-Antoine Nollet – 1746
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6. Today Measuring the experience of Real Users is not
quite as shocking.
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7. Real Users
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8. Real Users
• Get delighted
• Get frustrated
• Have credit cards
• ... that they are attached to
• Form an impression from experience
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9. Real Users
• Get delighted
• Get frustrated
• Have credit cards
• ... that they are attached to
• Form an impression from experience
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10. Real Users
• Get delighted
• Get frustrated
• Have credit cards
• ... that they are attached to
• Form an impression from experience
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11. Real Users
• Get delighted
• Get frustrated
• Have credit cards
• ... that they are attached to
• Form an impression from experience
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12. Real Users
• Get delighted
• Get frustrated
• Have credit cards
• ... that they are attached to
• Form an impression from experience
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13. What can we measure?
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14. Anything that the user does!
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15. Anything that the user does!
(in the browser)
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16. But we really care about performance here...
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17. So let’s talk about How
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18. Modern Browsers – no problem
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19. Modern Browsers – no problem
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20. Real Users don’t always use the latest browsers.
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21. So there’s a lot of magic to support the other
31.38%
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22. The other 31.38%...
1 Get a timestamp before they leave a page
2 Save it in a cookie
3 Compare with timestamp when the page loads
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23. The other 31.38%...
1 Get a timestamp before they leave a page
2 Save it in a cookie
3 Compare with timestamp when the page loads
Then there’s some magic to handle edge-cases
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24. ...magic
• What if the user goes off-site between pages?
• What if there’s SSL involved?
• What about new tab?
• What about those strange cases where they leave a page
after they load a new one?
• What about those common cases where they open
multiple pages from a search engine but don’t actually look
at them?
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25. But it doesn’t need to be...
We put all this magic into boomerang
http://lognormal.github.com/boomerang/doc/
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26. boomerang
• BSD licensed JavaScript library
• Measure load time, bandwidth, latency
• DNS lookup time, NavTiming, Connection Type
• Page Parameters
• And anything else you can write a plugin for
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27. And it beacons all of this back to a predefined URL
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28. So what then?
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29. Are you Ops, F2E or Product?
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30. Spot the datacenter
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31. It’s actually in Nederland
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32. How does bandwidth change around the world?
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33. Did you know that IE7 seems to be faster than IE8?
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34. But that’s mostly IE9 users browsing in IE7
compatibility mode.
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35. What does a website’s performance distribution look
like?
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36. That’s my Blog (please visit)
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37. Log-normal distribution
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38. Bimodal distribution
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39. Distributions
• Sparse distribution suggests that you don’t have enough
data points
• Log-normal distribution is typical
• Bi-modal distribution suggests two (or more) distributions
combined
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40. Distributions are interesting, but how does it affect
engagement?
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41. Did you know that user patience wrt performance is
a cultural thing?
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42. It’s tied both to where a user is from, and also the
type of service.
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43. different types of sites
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44. We borrowed a biological term called LD50 and
applied it to Load Time v/s Bounce Rate
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45. LD50
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46. This helps you fix only the stuff that’s hurting you.
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47. Did you know that users bounce if a page is too
fast?
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48. But that’s mostly because error pages are the fastest.
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49. Measure → Hypothesize → Test → Fix
← Repeat ←
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50. What delighted users a few years ago is now an
expected baseline, the absence of which will frustrate
them.
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51. Changing Expectations
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52. Thank You!
Questions?
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53. • Philip Tellis
• @bluesmoon
• philip@bluesmoon.info
• www.SOASTA.com
• boomerang
• LogNormal Blog
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54. Image Credits
• Jean-Antoine Nollet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Antoine_Nollet
• New York Times Olympic Medal Winners
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/05/sports/olympics/the-
100-meter-dash-one-race-every-medalist-ever.html
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