This document discusses using numbers and data to tell meaningful stories about user behavior and site usage on the SPIE Digital Library website. It recommends taking a narrative approach by focusing on characters, settings, and plots to understand users, their environment, and how they interact with the site. The document then provides examples of questions that metrics could help answer about different content types, communities, and site development, to ensure stories are relevant to specific audiences and help guide improvements to the digital library.

1. Telling StoriesWith Numbers
Kelvin Saxton
Project Manager
SPIE Digital Library

2. Use numbers
Build stories
Answer questions

3. Make it meaningful

4. Characters
Setting
Plot

5. Users
Environment
Behavior

6. Who’s questions?

7. Theirs & ours

8. Usage
Usage
& Usage

9. Usage
Behavior
Site health

10. New questions

11. Content Types
Communities
Site Development

12. Content Types
• Video & Slides
• Field Guides
• Data Sets
Communities
• Users—New conferences, authors vs
researchers
• Stakeholders—Conferences, corporate web
site, content owners
Site Development
• Keeping up with Agile dev
• A/B testing—editorial content, features &
functionality

13. Meaningful stories…
Metrics-based
In context
Audience-specific

14. SPIE Digital Library
http://spiedigitallibrary.org
Kelvin Saxton
kelvins@spie.org