Firefox/Activity Stream

2016-08-05T22:29:44Z

Edwong: /* Product Milestones */

=Overview=
Activity Stream for Firefox is a collection of all the things you do in the browser that you care about displayed in a rich and meaningful way. We plan to show rich content with images from recent pages, screen shots, downloads, closing sessions, notifications, and improve your results in the awesome bar. Eventually we hope to be the central feed of the things you care about.

[[File:Activity-stream-2016-03-19.png|800px|frameless]]

===Key Documents===
* What is Context Graph: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Context_Graph
* Code: https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream
* Issues: https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/issues
* Product/UX Trello Board: https://trello.com/b/KX3hV8XS/activity-stream

===Other Resources===

* Desktop MVP: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lCdgLbF4z758SVD90BCFhZaaMT50Pz0tR5D0yCIVtro/edit
* Original Desktop UX: https://mozilla.invisionapp.com/share/GA5RW90CW Mocks v1
* Analytics blog: http://emtwo.github.io/

=Install=

===Stable Release===

Activity Stream is available as a [https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/activity-stream Test Pilot experiment] and can be downloaded by signing up for [https://testpilot.firefox.com/ Test Pilot], our feature testing platform for Firefox. Android and iOS are in development, stay tuned.

===Developer Release===

The developer release is updated each time code is committed to master in GitHub. This is version is less stable than the version that's released to Test Pilot. Use with caution:

https://moz-activity-streams-dev.s3.amazonaws.com/dist/latest.html

'''Note''': The data being collected by the add-on is [https://github.com/mozilla/activity-streams/blob/master/data_dictionary.md documented in the repo].

=Reporting Issues=

If you find a bug or have a suggestion, please submit it on GitHub:

https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/issues/new

=Planning=
==Goals==
* Help users reconnect with their favorite things from around the web
* Finish tasks across devices
* Give users more control of their activities in Firefox
* Define Firefox as the helpful user agent that’s looking out for you

==Product Plan==
* Q3: Consistent cross platform experience
* Q3: Trending and recommended items (powered by Pocket)
* Q3: Easier access to the best pages from history
* Q3: Cross platform validation
* Q4: Begin landing code in Firefox across platforms

==Success==
* Effective cross discipline teams solving problems across platforms
* Validation of key assumptions through metrics and user interviews
* Activity Stream in the hands of all our users
* Users have easy access to their favorite things in Firefox and therefore spend more time using it

==Schedule==
[[File:AS schedule.png|1000px|frameless]]

===Product Milestones===

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! !! Status !! Phase !! Description !! Owner
|-
| 1 || DONE || Vision || Define high level goals how Activity Stream fits into the Context Graph initiative || Chapman
|-
| 2|| DONE || Design and Planning || Activity Stream in Desktop, Android, and iOS with sync as the platform for Context Graph || Team
|-
| 3a|| WIP || Mobile MVP || Android and iOS browsers have basic functionality of Activity Stream enabled. || Stefan
|-
| 3b || WIP || Desktop Engagement || Desktop has demonstrated user value in increasing median activity stream interactions by weekly cohort. || Tim
|-
| 4 || || Enabling for all users || Need to plan, define, and engineer activity stream to release to all users. || Stefan/Tim
|-
| 5 || || Product focused features || Full stack teams to deliver coherent features across all clients driving engagement in Firefox || Team
|}

= Engineering =

Activity Stream [status: green]

Current Sprint Goals for "Elk Island" milestone
* DONE - Recommendation highlight MVP experiment live at 30% users.
* DONE (dev chan) - display highlight origin
* DONE Engagement Model and Exec dashboard

Next Milestone:
* Share context menu and toolbar button
* Search/Filter timeline view
* Show synced data source
* Local storage infrastructure

Changelog: https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md

Mobile sprint tasks (started Monday):

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Activity_Stream/Mobile_Sprint_Planning

'''[[Firefox/Activity_Stream_Updates | Past Updates]]'''

== Milestones ==
Desktop:

https://github.com/mozilla/activity-stream/milestones

Current mobile team work:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Activity_Stream/Mobile_Sprint_Planning

== Cross Team Projects ==

==== Page MetaData Parsing ====
Problem: embedly proxy server has limitations in performance, client-side intelligence in display heuristics, and has a high cost.

Questions and Goals:
* How do we land and prioritize the work to use Local page meta data parsing?
* What dependencies and risks are there?
** Performance could hang the main thread for ~100ms per page till we get Loci/worker queue
** Quality of the parsing results and image identification could be lower than embedly
** Advanced storage of page indices is needed to improve scoring, de-duplication, and intelligence of displayed content.

==== Rank/Scoring heuristics for content relevance ====
Problem: current query of places.db has limitations in flexibility and inclusion of other signals.

Solution: How can we build system that could help us learn programmatically what types of content is more engaging for users measured by click-through-rate (CTR)?

Questions and Goals:
* How do we land a scoring system
* How can we maintain low latency of computation?

==== Signals ====
'''Problem''': the heuristics for ranking page value, frecency or scoring, could improve by adding more signals from user activity

'''Solution''': Let's experiment with a basic set of new signals that are already available (e.g. share events, etc...) and add them to a scoring system to test how we can improve relevance to users measured by CTR.

'''Hypothesis''': If we deploy a scoring/ranking system and feed it more signals making score more accurate, we will achieve higher interactions on page.

'''Work to do this:
'''* Andrei and team working on MVP of scoring and ranking system in Activity Stream as an experiment which can be preffed on/off.

* Nan/Olivier working on storage to store signals.

Two groups of signals here:

* A: What user signals can we record now and feed into Activity Stream's scoring system?

* B: What user signals can we enable in gecko and feed into Activity Stream's scoring system for the long term or understanding what signals matter? We could consider uplifting behind a pref, where AS can flip the pref.

'''Actions''':
* Identify what signals are in A vs B - @Brendan can you identify this and update the sheet?
* How do we get A into scoring system or the current query system.
* Do we want to do work in gecko now to enable B signals? If yes, who can do this?

==== Performance ====
Problem: If we parse pages locally, we need to preserve performance which could be impacted if we parse many pages. Storing parsed page meta data would also improve reduce duplicate computations on existing pages.

Solution:
* Loci, a worker queue that could parse pages without blocking the main thread.
* Advanced storage to store page meta data for fast queries by score.

=Team - RACI =

Product owner: Nick C.

Eng Leads: Tim S., Stefan A.

Technical Program Manager: Edwin W.

UX Leads: Aaron B., Amy L., Bryan B.

UR Lead: Gemma P.

Product Marketing: Mike H.

QA: Peter D., Aaron T., Kevin B.

Exec Sponsor: Mark Mayo/Nick Ngyuen

=Communications=

IRC: #activity-stream

Slack: firefox-team.slack.com - please email to be added to group

Email:
* activity-stream@lists.mozilla.org *all* | [[https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/mozilla.activity-stream subscribe]]
* as-team@mozilla.com *paid-staff* | [[https://groups.google.com/a/mozilla.com/forum/#!forum/activity-stream subscribe]]

VidyoRoom: ActivityStream