Part I of RUM Distillation 101. Part II is by Jonathan Klein available here: http://www.slideshare.net/jnklein/uxfest-performance-a

1. • Philip Tellis
• @bluesmoon
• philip@bluesmoon.info
• SOASTA
• boomerang
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2. RUM Distillation 101
Philip Tellis / philip@bluesmoon.info
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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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