Beyond the experience economy, where players are rewarded not just for their time in a game but also what they’ve done with that time, there’s another force shaping how games will operate in the future: AI. As technology continues to advance at breakneck speed and our lives become increasingly connected through digital networks, gamers are no longer confined by geographical boundaries or even physical ones. With this kind of power comes new challenges as well – especially when it comes to monetizing without relying on human input.
1E Tachyon is a new programming language that was released in late 2017. It’s a functional, concurrent language that can be used to build games and apps. 1e Tachyon has its own documentation which can be found here:
https://1etachyon.github.io/tachyon-docs/
Welcome back to the 1E Tachyon Platform for Unified Experience Management’s Learn with Me series from ATA! If you’ve missed any of the prior posts, you can catch up right here.
I’ll go through the Tachyon Experience application in this article on 1E’s Tachyon. The Experience program, dubbed “digital experience management” in marketing parlance, intends to monitor common endpoint performance and maintenance concerns, as well as the user’s overall feeling toward productivity.
You may be shaking your head at concepts like “experience” and “sentiment” right now. You may question why I’m not mentioning WMI, program installations, files, or the registry. I’m not going all geeky on you since these concepts aren’t explicitly addressed in the Experience application. Instead, it tries to abstract all of that using technical data in order to get to the fundamental statistic that IT aspires to: user productivity.
It’s difficult to assess the user experience.
To say the least, those of us in IT who manage endpoints aren’t the most popular people. Many of us are forgotten about until something goes wrong. But you can guarantee we’ll be on fast dial if a user’s endpoint fails. Unfortunately, IT professionals are underestimated, but isn’t the lack of involvement with IT the point?
The lights are kept on by IT. From the standpoint of an endpoint manager, the aim is to make users as productive as possible. Every time a user needs to write an email, call, or, God forbid, start a ticket, they are wasting time. Every minute a user spends interacting with technology is a minute they are not doing what they were hired to accomplish. That is an issue.
It’s not true that “no news is good news” just because the helpdesk line is quiet. If you don’t hear the helpdesk phone ring, it doesn’t indicate the user is pleased, just like the tree in the forest. A user may still face irritating issues such as a crashing program on a regular basis, poor response time, or that one solution they learnt years ago.
Whether you realize it or not, each user has a unique experience with their endpoint. Unfortunately, IT often only attends to the squeaky wheels, and their performance is evaluated based on closed tickets.
We don’t go the additional mile to be judged on what we’re all pursuing at the end of the day: the user’s experience. 1E’s Tachyon Experience application, which is one of Tachyon’s features, tries to alter that. As I became used to it, I found it intriguing.
How does it compare? Let’s see what happens!
What exactly is the Tachyon Experience Application from 1E?
The Tachyon Experience application is only for the purpose of assessing user experience. It’s all about quantifying experience and splitting it down into several categories.
- Stability — Measures the number of crashes, hangs, and service failures in the operating system and software.
- Responsiveness is a metric that assesses the speed with which operating system operations and program activities are completed. This parameter determines how long consumers are kept waiting.
- Endpoint hardware such as processor, memory, and disk resources are measured for load and throughput.
- Sentiment – This metric assesses how consumers feel about their endpoint experience. This measure is made up of the three previous indicators, as well as direct user input via surveys.
It’s all about discovery when it comes to experience. Tachyon continually gathers data from endpoints and transmits it back to the Tachyon database through the 1E agent. The data may then be sliced and diced in any manner you like thanks to a set of dashboards illustrated below.
Tachyon Experience Dashboards
Full disclosure: I’ll only talk about the aspects of Experience that I think are interesting. I haven’t covered all of Tachyon Experience’s dashboards.
The Overview Page of the Experience
When you go to the Experience page for the first time, you’ll see the Overview page. The Overview page is where all of the information collected by 1E’s agents is compiled into a single Experience Score. This Experience Score is calculated using a set of algorithms based on each of the four criteria mentioned before.
To use the Experience application, your Tachyon account must be a member of the Experience Viewers group.
The dashboard is divided into numerous areas with different methods to gauge the desired user experience, as you can see below.
Dashboard for the 1E Experience
You may dive deeper on individual users’ experiences if you go to the Page for Users. The 1etrnuser account has been seen utilizing two machines, as seen below. This user seems to have had a better experience on 1ETRNW72.
Page for Users
Data Filtering
Although the Overview page is appealing, you will most likely want to go further into several topics. The data presented on most Experience pages may be filtered in a useful manner. You may just click on a certain piece instead of travelling back to a table of data.
Filters are an excellent technique to limit down patterns. If you find, for example, that users on Windows 10 Enterprise Build 1709 computers have poor experience ratings but users on prior releases have good experience scores, you may start looking into why.
By clicking on particular components on the dashboard, all other elements on the dashboard auto-populate depending on the filtered data, as seen in the GIF below.
Data Filtering with Tachyon Experience
You’ll see that the filter you apply in one dashboard crosses over to the other when you click through each category in Experience. If you filter on a certain computer model on the Overview page, then go to the Responsiveness page, you’ll only see Responsiveness statistics for that model.
The Devices Section
If you notice an anomaly for a user’s experience score, click on The Devices Section. Here is where you can see all of the data grouped by device.
When you choose a device, you’ll see each measure that contributes to the total Experience Score on a range of 0 to 100, along with some graphical progress bars.
Unlike other endpoint management tools, this device screen not only displays all of the standard information such as name, CPU, RAM, and storage, but also allows you to customize the device. It also gives you accurate figures for all of those resources.
On the device’s screen, there is a lot of common information.
Dashboard Personalization
You can personalize the bulk of the dashboards in Experience quite a bit. The following are some of the methods to personalize the charts that I found interesting:
- Adding and deleting metrics — Most dashboards include a button on the top right that takes you to a Select Metrics page where you may add, delete, and reorganize columns in different tables.
Metrics are being added and removed.
- Customizing and storing screen layouts — To add a certain chart element to a dashboard, click the Edit Layout button and add, delete, or resize various items. This one appealed to me simply because of the variety of arrangement options available.
Screen layouts may be customized and saved.
- Changing the kind of chart on the fly was definitely my favorite feature. On certain displays, you may change the type of a chart element by clicking on a title bar button. The chart will immediately update, as you can see below. There is no need to refresh the page.
Changing the kind of chart on the fly
- Creating presets — Once you’ve produced the ideal chart element, use the Star symbol on certain dashboards to store presets that you can use on other dashboards.
Creating presets
Surveys
Have you ever received one of those vexing emails asking for comments on a transaction? I’m sure we’ve all done it. When was the last time you took the time to provide that kind of feedback? If you’re anything like me, it’s probably a once-in-a-lifetime incident. The Surveys feature gives me the same impression.
You may build and deliver surveys to your users using Tachyon’s Experience application. You may construct a survey that asks a user a question by giving it a name, a description, a question to ask, and a mechanism to submit feedback.
Tachyon then waits for the computer to remain inactive for a period of time before displaying a notice in the system tray, as seen below.
Putting up a survey
Taking this functionality a step further, Tachyon may use a User Sentiment survey to incorporate the comments it gets into the Sentiment Experience Score. This input is subsequently included into the user’s total Experience Score.
While I applaud 1E for taking the effort and see the value of this feature (evaluating total user experience), I’m not sure how beneficial it will be in practice.
I know that users disregard alerts the bulk of the time because of my 20+ years in IT, virtually all of which were spent monitoring endpoints in some way. They are uninterested in receiving comments and just want to move on with their day.
I’m concerned that if this functionality is implemented and a company begins to depend on User Sentiment surveys, the user Experience Scores will be skewed and IT resources will be directed in the incorrect way. Human emotions are complex and difficult to quantify. I can think of a slew of instances in which a survey respondent can provide false information.
The processes for creating a survey are shown below. Fill up the information, specify the sort of answer you want the user to provide, and send the policy out.
Creating a new survey is a simple process.
A policy update is being sent out.
With surveys, there’s a chance of being caught off guard.
I would put the policy update out while testing the Surveys function and question whether the devices truly got and implemented the instruction. The view of simply the replies to the question is shown below.
Although there are other ways to know when an agent acquired a policy, it would have been wonderful to have that information directly where I need it: in the Panel of Experts.
Panel of Experts
Tracking down problematic software is an example of a use case.
Let’s conclude off this article with an example of how Tachyon’s Experience application may be used. Let’s imagine you’ve been receiving complaints from users that a line of business application has been crashing. You’ve only heard from a tiny percentage of people so far, but you’re worried there’s a larger pattern at work.
Assume you’re seeing some issues with crashes in the screenshots. In my lab, I was unable to replicate this real-world but difficult-to-reproduce condition. Just follow me.
As seen below, you launch the Experience application and browse to the Software tab. For Google Update v1.3.34.7, there are hundreds of crashes, but none for v1.3.35.441. Interesting.
Problematic fiction The Google Update app is crashing on a large number of devices.
You may dive down into the exact devices impacted by these crashes by clicking on the row in the Software dashboard. Then you observe that each device has a significant percentage of Processor Time.
All machines that are running the fictitious problem Version of Google Update
You choose one of the devices to learn that the CPU queue length has been unusually long lately.
One of the troublesome gadgets from the “experience point of view”
When you click on the Processor: Queue length metric, you’ll be sent to that device’s Trends page, where you’ll find that the issue began just a short time ago.
A graph of a certain device’s trend indicating when the imaginary processor’s CPU percentage increased.
You can see how you can use Tachyon Experience to troubleshoot a problem by drilling down to various levels. Knowing when the problem began helps you to go further and finally locate the source.
Now it’s time to hop over to the Tachyon Explorer app and start working on a solution!
Conclusion
So far, the Experience app has been the one that has piqued my interest the most. The technology is intriguing, but I’m waiting to see it in action in a huge business before I start raving about it.
The dashboards and their versatility with modifications, diving down, and more have wowed me. The user interface is well-crafted. Overall, I had a fantastic time with Experience (ba dum tiss).
The “1e tachyon cloud” is a tool that allows users to create and share their own experiences. You can use this tool to create your own stories, games, and more.
Related Tags
- tachyon exchange
- tachyon welcome
- tachyon wakeups
- 1e digital experience
- 1e customers
