Measuring user quality of experience for a streaming media service

摘要

Techniques are disclosed for representing a user quality of experience (QoE) experienced by users of a streaming media service using a single QoE metric. The single QoE metric may be determined based on a set of empirical characteristics relating to the streaming video service such as startup latency, video quality, and the likelihood of interruptions in streaming playback. The empirical characteristics may be weighted according to how much one factor influences user quality of experience, relative to the others. Representing the QoE as a single metric may allow a streaming media service provider to improve key business measures such as subscriber retention and engagement.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method for deriving a single quality of experience (QoE) metric related to a streaming video service, the method comprising:
sampling a plurality of performance characteristics associated with the streaming video service while streaming media content to one or more of users; for each performance characteristic included in the plurality of performance characteristics, determining a numerical contribution to the single QoE metric for the performance characteristic based on a contribution function that comprises a sigmoid curve function and correlates different values of the performance characteristic with different numerical contributions to the single QoE metric; correlating the single QoE metric with a measure of user engagement to determine a plurality of weights, wherein each weight corresponds to the numerical contribution determined for a different performance characteristic; computing the single QoE metric as a linear combination of weighted contributions based on the numerical contributions determined for the plurality of performance characteristics and the plurality of weights; and updating at least one configuration setting associated with the streaming video service based on the single QoE metric to improve the quality of experience being provided to at least one user.