[dragonwriter]

> It shouldn't be that shocking that Microsoft doesn't cater to your use cases if they can't gather telemetry to know that you exist.

User research isn't limited to, and existed before, telemetry. Telemetry, if used, should be an additional channel of user research, not an excuse to be lazy.

[WorldMaker]

User Research isn't omniscient by any means and has the same opt-in biases. (More so, even, because most User Research wants to be done in lab environments and that raises the bar from "press check-box for passive data gathering" to "can physically get to lab for testing". Even the middle ground of "surveys" still has a time/attention/patience bar to hurdle that telemetry does not.)

Microsoft certainly used both Telemetry and lots of User Research in the Windows 8 development process, and clearly had many of the same blind spots in both. The point remains that opting into telemetry is still the lowest bar to hop as a user to getting your "voice" heard (as aggregate statistics).