[Myztiq]

Ok, here's a real example of how fullstory can help provide a better product. Bug reporting. A user gets a JS error on the page, but say my application is pretty complex, and the state machine I've built can't handle a particular state. Well, I can easily walk through the recording of what the user had done and reproduce the issue.

I can actually hop on a call with this user and walk them through how to do something, while looking at what page and what inputs they have filled in. This takes frustrating back and forth of "What do you see now?" that happens without this tool.

Say I want to influence user decisions by offering subtle cues to push them towards something that will be overall beneficial for them. By watching certain key users we can know what frustrates them (erratic mouse movements, long time searching for features etc) and what things they grok easily.

The article totally washes over a super important feature of fullstory, excluding elements[0]. When you include a simple class name or specifically selecting what you'd like to exclude.

[0] http://help.fullstory.com/technical-questions/exclude-elemen...

[kevinconroy]

+1 - having session recordings is a HUGE win to help track down hard-to-reproduce bugs. You can get the strangest bug reports, and by watching the session, as a dev, you can instantly translate it into the technical terms that the end user lacked and you can fix the problem.

It's also great for ad-hoc usability testing to see how people are using your features, where they slow down to read, what elements they try to click on but can't, and other UX improvements that you'd pay consultants six figures to put in a report for you.

[phkahler]

You guys are illustrating my point nicely. I have no doubt that session recording is very helpful in your debugging activity, and provides feedback for site design. The problem is that those capabilities are often used against the user as well. The people who enabled you to do that also enabled others to do bad things. The attack surface has been hugely increased in the name of convenience for developers. Remember, with the internet the whole world is on your doorstep and that doesn't consist of just developers trying to get their UX right.