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3 Comments

A Developer's Perspective: The Pain of Requesting Screen Recordings and Screenshots from Users

submitted this link on January 15, 2023
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    As a a developer, I never asked a customer for a screenshot or a screen recording. I saw it as my job to be able to figure out what happened and replicate the issue.

    Even asking something simple like what browser are you using has been too much.

    1. 1

      so you are ok to give 'x' number of hours instead of using some tool that will make your life easy?

      1. 2

        Yes.

        I'm not saying I wouldn't use a tool that would make my life easier. I CANNOT live without sentry. To me its important that its not visible to the user.

        I would rather spend X debugging than spend Y talking to users. Even if X is substantially bigger than Y.

        I could for sure see my customer support team using something like this though. They can walk the customer through it, I get the screenshot/video but don't need to talk to the customer.

        Another way I can see this working for me as a developer is if I can enable it for the customers that I know are being affected by a bug.

        For example if I know this happens only to customers that are in a city:

        mezchip.enabled = user.city == 'Chicago'
        

        I know this is a contrived example.

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