Debug Your App Through the User’s Eyes With a Session Replay Tool

And the unexpected benefits of using a session replay tool

Original Photo by Saketh Garuda on Unsplash, edits by Author

Applications fail all the time, we as developers know that and we’re the only ones that really accept that fact. But we also know that every problem has a solution. Granted, those solutions aren’t always easy to find or to build, but we can get there.

The problem is, in fact, not about building the solution but rather about understanding the root cause of our problems so that we can then tackle them. Sometimes bugs are simple, sometimes it’s just a missing semi-colon or a + that should’ve been a - . But other times problems are complex enough that we can’t really find them until real users start interacting with our apps.

And even then, the traditional ways of solving those problems aren’t optimal, so let’s take a look at how we can change that using a very particular type of tool.

The problem with the traditional approach

What do you usually do when you get a bug report? You try to reproduce it, don’t you? You read through your reproduction steps (if you’re lucky enough to have them) and you execute them one by one.

Eventually, you’re bound to find the same issue, and through some more digging, you can get to the cause of your sleepless nights.

Maybe.

Other times the bug reports say “the user complains about the app not working”, or even worse, “the app works sometimes, but when I click on the red button, it stops working”. And you’re left there wondering which of the 10 red buttons in your whole app the user is talking about, like

Source giphy

Of course, there are tools you can use to reach out to them, calls you can have to directly as them to share their screen (if they can figure out how to do it over Zoom) so you can see what they’re doing.

The key problem here is that you’re dealing with a bug that did not originate in your code, but rather on your user’s behavior. They’re interacting with your…