Naming Events

It's important to come up with a standardized pattern for events, that way we know what to look for and how to construct funnels and cohorts.

Most analytics tools, including Mixpanel, use a single string to identify an event. That string can be pretty much anything, so it's up to us to organize what those strings look like.

Object-Action Framework

I found an article by Compass describing (opens in a new tab) a pattern called the Object-Action framework. This seems like a good mental model to branch off of.

Adding A Name

While their guide only outlines Objects and Actions, I think it's important to add one more tier, Name, for filtering more specifically.

Rules

1. Each piece of a name (Object, Action, Name) is called a "tier"
2. Tiers are separated by an underscore _
3. Multi-word names are separated by a dash -
4. An Object and Action are required, a Name is optional
5. The order they appear in a string is Object first, Action second, and Name third

Examples

• page_viewed_interfacer
• page_viewed_home-screen
• checkout_begun
• header-button_clicked_docs
• user_created
• request_made_get
• request_made_patch

Tracking The Most Narrow Events

With this approach, we can embrace the flexibility and hierarchy to track multiple events at once if a Name is used.

For example, if we're tracking a request, we'll make the most specific call track('request_made_patch'). Within that track function, we can actually track two events: the request and the patch request. With the names delineated via underscores, we can do some logic like this:

function track(eventName) {
  const [object, action, name] = eventName.split("_");
  if (name) {
    sendTrackEvent(`${object}_${action}`); // Track the broader event as well
  }
  sendTrackEvent(eventName);
}

Inside our interface, we can now do a filter comparing the frequency of a given Name inside a given Object Action. For example, imagine each link in a header has an event: header-link_click_docs or header-link_click_dashboard. We can then see the event header-link_click happened 500 times, and the majority, lets say 400, of those were on header-link_click_dashboard. Then we would know to emphasize that dashboard link.