How do you detect silent data loss in user-facing systems?

Question

I&rsquo;m not talking about crashes, errors, or failed requests.I mean situations where data is lost quietly: - a user fills a long form, navigates away, and nothing is saved - a mobile browser suspends a tab and state disappears - a background sync never retries, but no error is reportedFrom the system&rsquo;s point of view, everything &ldquo;worked&rdquo;. From the user&rsquo;s point of view, their work is gone.I&rsquo;m curious: - Do teams actively try to detect this kind of silent data loss? - Or is it mostly accepted as unavoidable user behavior? - Are there metrics, patterns, or tools you&rsquo;ve seen work for this?Looking for real-world experiences, not theory.

JohnFen · Accepted Answer

I have seen many websites that detect if you've entered something into a field or touched some control and then try to switch away from the page. They then pop up a dialog box saying something like "you have unsaved changes, are you sure you want to leave?"

apothegm · Answer

Some web analytics libraries will take screen recordings of each user session. (No comment on the ethics of that.) Making a habit of watching those recordings in the early days of releasing a new feature or major UX change is a common pattern for detecting when users give up and supporting theories as to why.