RE: Analytics and responsive design

Hi John,

If I understand your question correctly, I think form factor plays a very important role in capturing metrics as it relates to responsive design and the user experience.

This Smashing Magazine article gives a good synopsis on the why:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/08/28/responsive-web-design-google-analytics/


Why Form Factor?
Speeding up and optimizing the user experience for a particular device or family of devices is always easier. In reality, though, creating a device-specific experience<https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/01/24/device-experiences---responsive-design/> for all types of devices is not feasible, given that the diversity of web-enabled devices will just continue to grow. However, every device has a particular form factor. Luke Wroblewski<http://www.lukew.com/>, author of Mobile First<http://www.lukew.com/resources/mobile_first.asp>, outlines three categories to identify device experiences<https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/01/24/device-experiences---responsive-design/>:

  *   usage or posture,
  *   input method,
  *   output or screen.
Because devices vary between these categories, we get different form factors. Hence, treating form factor as the primary dimension through which to monitor a responsive website makes sense. This will indicate which type of device to test for usability.

My thought is that form factor is probably a better indicator of user experience with additional data (potentially element queries).  For example, the way a user interacts with a responsive website on tablet is very different than on desktop. This difference comes down to form factor.

If I completely misunderstood your question, let me know and good luck!

Jason Day
Senior Web Developer, UX
jbday@llbean.com<mailto:jbday@llbean.com> | m.207.592.2253 | w.207.552.7084

L.L.Bean
15 Casco Street | Freeport, Maine 04032

From: John Stansbury [mailto:jstansbury@rmn.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2014 9:54 AM
To: public-respimg@w3.org
Subject: Analytics and responsive design

Apologies for tossing this email "over the transom" but I'm looking for opinions, examples, anything really on digital experience data collection in a responsive world. I've been rolling around in the W3C recommendation for digital data collection that was published last year. And in the same exercise, thinking on what digital analytics data looks like in a post-"page" world enabled by responsive design. I skimmed the article on element queries and it seems like that might be a more precise data source for capturing the user experience than making an assumption based on the type of device through which the experience is transpiring.

Regards,
John Stansbury

--
John Stansbury
Director, Global Analytics Platforms
RetailMeNot, Inc.
E: j<mailto:cborg@rmn.com>stansbury@rmn.com<mailto:stansbury@rmn.com>
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