In the near 10 years I’ve been in the analytics business, I’ve seen the industry grow and evolve from simple hit counters to advanced data mining techniques. In the past, where data collection and reporting has usually been very product-focused endeavor, today the more mature analytics practices have moved beyond simple site metrics. Understanding how many people visited your site might be nice to know, but the visitor doesn’t care much about how many other people came to the site. They care about a better experience and more convenience from start to finish, and not just when they visit your site. This requires something more complex and powerful than before. It requires User-Driven Analytics.
Hai Tech Eric
eclectic musings
Pebble vs. Android Wear, Which One Do You Buy?
While I am a long time user of the Pebble and backed it on Kickstarter, I wanted to compare it to Google’s Android Wear technology since its first announcement. It naturally led me to think, “Pebble vs. Android Wear, which one is better?” Well, I was lucky enough to snag an LG G Watch for $80 on a black friday sale. Since then, I’ve been switching between the two smartwatches, comparing how well they work in the real world. Deciding on the winner was harder than I thought, and the conclusion might surprise you… Continue reading
What does a Product Manager do? A Musical Metaphor
For the longest time, I’ve been passionate about working as a product manager. Once I got my first taste of it at Adobe, I couldn’t get enough. And yet, whenever I would talk to people in social circles, I had the hardest time describing my role without confusing or boring them. One of the ways I would describe my work was that of a mini-CEO, responsible not for the success of the entire company but rather just one or a few products within the company. While that metaphor helped, it was still woefully inadequate. While I held similar responsibilities for the success of my small portion of the business, I lacked the authority and budgets that CEOs have to work with.
Principles of Gaming in Industry
It is the nature of all human beings to seek learning through games, a structured paradigm that allows one to grasp new concepts and expand their horizons in a safer environment than the real world. We play house, tag, and create fingerpainting art as children. As we grow, we play sports, more complex games, and create finer works of art. Indeed, from our earliest days we rely on playing as the most effective way to learn about our world and how to live in it. Pondering this topic inevitably led to the question: Why does the playful approach to life stop when we grow up and move into a professional field?