Data Logging in The Grid 2

The Grid 2 includes a data logger along with some powerful analysis tools to assist you in visualising the data that has been recorded.  Logging data about activity within The Grid 2 can allow you to improve the grids that you create and provide. 

Privacy

Recording data about a user has privacy implications which should not be taken lightly.  We have taken a number of steps to try address this issue.

Off by default

Firstly, the data logger is always turned OFF by default.  This means that you must deliberately turn ON the data logger for each user.  This should help to ensure that there is no accidental recording of data.

Putting the user in control

There are commands to allow the user to turn data logging on or off as they please.  These include an indicator light so that the user can clearly see when data is being logged.

Recording non-private data only

The data recorded by The Grid 2 does not include personal information, as far as possible.  There are a couple of things that have been done to ensure this:

1. The content of sentences written or spoken is not recorded.  This means that you cannot see what someone has said by looking at the data log.
2. The time at which an action (such as a cell selection) occurs is stored separately from the action that occurred.  This means that it is very difficult to find out the order in which cells were selected, and hence reconstruct what was written.

Data Analysis

The Grid 2 includes a number of useful analysis tools for viewing the data that has been recorded.

Cell activity

This gives you a visual representation of how frequently each cell is selected on each grid.  The cells are graded according to how often they have been selected, and colour-coded accordingly.
 
To display cell activity, go to Analysis > Data Log > Show Cell Activity Levels.

Note that when you are displaying cell activity, the data logger is temporarily disabled.  This means you can jump between grids without changing the statistics about the number of jumps made.

Grid visits vs steps to grid

This shows a graph on which each point represents one or more grids.  The x-axis is the number of jumps from the home page to the grid, and the y-axis show how frequently that grid is used.

To display this (and the other) charts, go to Analysis > Data Log > Charts.

Activity by hour

This shows the relative amount of use by hour of day.  The x-axis shows the hour on a 24 hour clock (i.e. 15 represents activity between 3:00pm and 3:59pm) and the y-axis is the percentage of overall activity.

Activity by day of week

For each week you can see how the activity was distributed across the different days of the week.

Grid visits

Here you can see a chart showing how many often each grid was visited (red bars corresponding to the scale on the left) and how many selections were made per visit (green bars corresponding to the scale on the right).

Grid activity (pie)

This pie chart shows the information about how much each grid is used as a proportion of the total activity.