Prototype kit: tracking data analytics

[ghost]

What

At the minute we have no idea how many people are using (or how) the prototype kit (other than some manual research looking for them on public GitHub repos). We should investigate the use of (opt-in) analytics to give us an idea of usage so that we can make future improvements to the kit.

This is something that is done in the GOV.UK prototype kit using Google analytics: https://govuk-prototype-kit.herokuapp.com/docs/usage-data

• your anonymous ID number
• the Prototype Kit version number
• your operating system (for example 'Windows 10')
• your Node.js version

and is quite popular in JavaScript frameworks such as Next.js: https://nextjs.org/telemetry

• Command invoked (next build, next dev, or next export)
• Version of Next.js
• General machine information (e.g. number of CPUs, macOS/Windows/Linux, whether or not the command was run within CI)
• What Next.js plugins are present in your project
• Duration of next build and size of application (total number of pages)

Why

Tasks

• Look into how GOV.uk track their data

[joelanman]

hey 👋 just to say that we don't get very high opt in, so it's not that useful for 'how many people use it' - more for some trends in version take-up, operating systems, etc.

One other approach is to record number of times the download link is clicked somewhere, though this doesnt account for people sharing their copy, or cloning from github

You could also survey people to find out rough usage numbers