How mobile screen-recording helped a research consultancy understand how software developers use search engines and online resources as part of their learning and discovery process.

Software development is a profession of continuous learning and improvement. As is the nature of the game, developers must constantly work to stay up-to-date with the latest trends, changes, and developments within their field. Naturally, the internet plays a central role in how they manage this. But with countless online resources, understanding the needs, routines and learning methods will vary widely amongst developers.

mobile-screen-recording-developer-learning-case-study

The Challenge

Because there are so many resources and methods available to software developers when it comes to learning and discovery, understanding their motivations, behaviors, and rituals is very difficult from a research perspective.

Given that all of their work is done online, it can be even more difficult to gain an insight into the methods they use. When our client approached us, this was the challenge they faced. They needed to understand the learning and discovery journey of developers in order to tailor a new cloud-based platform that caters to their needs.

But to understand this hard-to-reach demographic, they needed a tool that would give them a real-life window into their daily behaviors.

The Goals

Our client’s objectives were to:

Understand the online behaviour of software developers in relation to everyday tasks
Gain an insight into the learning and discovery journey embarked upon by software developers
Understand the user experience and associated pain-points of current online resources that developers use and get a clearer picture of their ideal online solution

27 respondents

14 tasks

2 weeks

Tasking strategy: Scheduled tasking

The Solution

When our client approached us, they knew one thing; they needed a real-life, in context insight into software developers’ online learning behavior in the course of their work.

We were confident that our mobile screen-recording feature would provide the periscope that was needed. By assigning a task list with 14 tasks to respondents, our client was able to see exactly how respondents were navigating online to discover new product features and trusted resources.

It also allowed respondents’ to show exactly how they navigated roadblocks, evaluated directionals links and viewed and evaluated relevant documentation.

What made mobile screen-recording particularly powerful in this project, was respondents’ ability to explain everything they were doing online with the integrated voice recording on the mobile screen-record feature.

From the first search online, right up to evaluations and discussing desired outputs, our client was able to gain a full understanding of what 27 individual respondents were experiencing.

This was disruptively powerful, as it was placing our client in the mind-space of even remote-working, freelance developers in their own home. This was the kind of insight which was previously unattainable but so critical in designing a complete user experience for their new cloud-based platform.

Our ability to segment respondents by target group gave our client the ability to understand the divergent needs of different operating system users. This was particularly important, as it would allow them to make the correct decisions when it came to designing their own cloud-based platform. By getting a visualization of respondents behavior differed based upon their operating systems, gave our client the ability to understand how usage of resources differed based upon their own software preferences.

If you’d like to learn more about how mobile screen-recording can help you understand the online behavior software developers, please get in contact using the form below.