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the best way to build and ship software Hard-to-Measure Things @chrissiebrodigan, GitHub User Research

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the best way to build and ship software A little about me …. 2 ! •Live in Sausalito •Trained historian •UX designer •GitHub’s first researcher

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the best way to build and ship software

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the best way to build and ship software

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the best way to build and ship software GitHub 3 years ago … Justin & I research things together now!!

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the best way to build and ship software What would interest people about user research at Monitorama?

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the best way to build and ship software

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“ the best way to build and ship software 8 ! WHAT ARE THE WAYS HIDDEN VARIABLES SCREW US? – @D2FN

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the best way to build and ship software All products have blind spots

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the best way to build and ship software

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the best way to build and ship software Research is GitHub’s flashlight

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the best way to build and ship software Why? User research What is happening Monitoring tools

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the best way to build and ship software WTF are those humans doing?

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the best way to build and ship software How do you uncover why something is happening?

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“ the best way to build and ship software 15 ! GAP FROM 
 METRIC/GRAPH TO INSIGHT CAN BE HUGE – @RANDOMMOOD

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the best way to build and ship software

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“ the best way to build and ship software 17 ! RESEARCH: WITHOUT IT ALL YOU HAVE IS LUCK. - @SBOAK

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the best way to build and ship software Human instrument for socially meaningful questions

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the best way to build and ship software Get out from behind the numbers & in front of people

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the best way to build and ship software When you talk with people look for … 21 ! 1. Goals 2. Motivations 3. Workarounds 
 Humans do really interesting things with software when they’re confused & frustrated

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the best way to build and ship software Example: Someone is running a large job

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the best way to build and ship software Solution: Limit or block them?

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the best way to build and ship software Modest Proposal … 24 ! 1. Talk with them about their goals 2. Look for their motivations 3. Design a better solution *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

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the best way to build and ship software Develop trust in research Listen to the right people

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the best way to build and ship software Let me show you …

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the best way to build and ship software Who uses GitHub.com?

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the best way to build and ship software Who uses GitHub Enterprise?

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the best way to build and ship software Who administers GitHub Enterprise?

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the best way to build and ship software ♥♥ ♥ HUG

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the best way to build and ship software Product that’s out of our hands and on your hardware

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the best way to build and ship software Abundance of data GitHub.com

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the best way to build and ship software Absence of data GitHub Enterprise

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the best way to build and ship software How do you study a BLACK BOX?

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the best way to build and ship software Story #1 System Administrator Happiness

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the best way to build and ship software Designed a bi-annual survey

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the best way to build and ship software Instrument measures … 37 ! 1. Demographics 2. Product Experience 3. Net Promoter Score

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“ the best way to build and ship software 38 ! FASTER, SMALLER PACKAGES AND MORE RELIABLE UPDATE PROCEDURE (I WET MY PANTS EACH TIME I UPGRADE.) Where do we need to improve the most?

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the best way to build and ship software Instrument is designed to be … 39 ! • Repeatable • Longitudinal (company-level) • Actionable

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the best way to build and ship software Takeaway: Increase product focus on the administrator experience

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the best way to build and ship software Story #2. Slow rollout of a large feature

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the best way to build and ship software Git Large File Storage (Git LFS) on GitHub

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the best way to build and ship software 3. Early access program

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the best way to build and ship software Things that kept our team up at night …

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the best way to build and ship software Pricing & Billing Fair & easy?

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the best way to build and ship software Infrastructure Responsible & stable?

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the best way to build and ship software

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the best way to build and ship software Support Generate volume?

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the best way to build and ship software 3-part research plan

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the best way to build and ship software Research plan … 50 ! 1. Survey 2. Pre-release 3. Early access program: • Entry screener • Controlled experiment • Exit survey

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the best way to build and ship software 1. Survey Sample size: 1,800

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the best way to build and ship software 2. Pre-release Sample size: 20

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the best way to build and ship software 3. Early access program Sample size: 13, 000+

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the best way to build and ship software EAP runs as a controlled experiment

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the best way to build and ship software Six weeks

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the best way to build and ship software Sent two exit surveys

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the best way to build and ship software

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the best way to build and ship software If we could grant you one wish to improve GitHub, what would you wish for?

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the best way to build and ship software All 3 data sources changed our knowledge of the world

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the best way to build and ship software But, we forgot about something important

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the best way to build and ship software We’ve been telling people for years DON’T use large files with Git

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the best way to build and ship software Reified with file size limits on GitHub.com

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the best way to build and ship software Asked people to leap into a new belief system, adopt a tool, & change behavior

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the best way to build and ship software Create a path to change behaviors

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the best way to build and ship software Framework for behaviors … 68 ! 1. Current – Used to doing 2. New – Open to try to achieve goals 3. Aspirational – Future big changes. Current New Aspirational Thank you Diane Loviglio for teaching me!

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the best way to build and ship software Git LFS 1. 2. 3. 4. Current behaviors Use Dropbox Reality Don’t use Git 
 with large files New behaviors Use Git LFS Aspirational
 behaviors Growth

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the best way to build and ship software Going from current to aspirational behavior is kind of crazy

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the best way to build and ship software Takeaway: Adoption takes time & trust especially across team workflows

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the best way to build and ship software Next EAP: Org/user permissions

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the best way to build and ship software Will belief systems change with new permissions?

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the best way to build and ship software Story #3. The undo button

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the best way to build and ship software

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the best way to build and ship software Branching v. forking

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the best way to build and ship software Activity: Feature prioritization

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the best way to build and ship software Most important to least important: 81 ! •Branch Permissions •Automatically syncing forks •Sign-off •Only merge with passing tests •Undo button •Disable force push •Private forks •Prevent merging from the command line

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the best way to build and ship software Most important to least important: 82 ! •Branch Permissions •Automatically syncing forks •Sign-off •Only merge with passing tests •Undo button •Disable force push •Private forks •Prevent merging from the command line

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the best way to build and ship software “What! There’s an undo button?”

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the best way to build and ship software “What do you mean by undo button?”

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the best way to build and ship software “You tell me, where would you use an undo button?”

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the best way to build and ship software “How would an undo button help you?”

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the best way to build and ship software “Tell me about a story when an undo button have helped you?”

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“ the best way to build and ship software 88 ! WHAT ARE THE WAYS HIDDEN VARIABLES HELP US CONNECT WITH HUMANS? -@TENACIOUSCB

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the best way to build and ship software Hard-to-measure things are fun to measure

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the best way to build and ship software Guarantee: If you think in terms of human behaviors & talk with people You will become better at discovering & solving problems

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the best way to build and ship software You are my people, I want to hang out, help out

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the best way to build and ship software • Pull Requests • Issues • Admin-UI • Permissions • New User Experiences Are you interested? [email protected]

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the best way to build and ship software ♥ Thank You ♥ [email protected] @tenacicouscb