Application Performance Metrics Using Privacy-Preserving Percentiles

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Solution Overview

Problem

Developers of software applications face challenges in obtaining performance metrics that balance privacy considerations with accurate understanding, as existing methods may reveal sensitive information about user interactions.

Innovation Solution

Implementing techniques that provide comparative performance metrics to developers by obfuscating exact data points within percentile ranges and applying differential privacy operations to establish statistical noise, ensuring privacy while maintaining metric accuracy.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Measurement precision

If exact performance metrics are provided to developers, then developers can accurately understand their application performance, but sensitive user data may be revealed compromising privacy

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveperformance metric accuracyVSAvoidprivacy risk

Core Design Contradiction:

Measurement precisionVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

The patent introduces percentile ranges as an intermediary representation between exact metrics and privacy protection. Instead of displaying precise performance values that could reveal sensitive user data, the system maps metrics to percentile ranges (e.g., 0-24th, 25-49th, 50-74th, 75-99th percentiles) that obscure individual data points while preserving comparative performance information for developers

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The patent transforms the parameter representation from exact numerical values to categorical percentile ranges. By changing how performance metrics are expressed (from precise numbers to range categories), the system maintains utility for developers while reducing privacy risks associated with exposing granular performance data

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

2Object-affected harmful factors

If percentile information is obfuscated to protect privacy, then user data privacy is protected, but developers may lose accurate understanding of their metrics

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveprivacy protectionVSAvoidmetric information accuracy

Core Design Contradiction:

Object-affected harmful factorsVSLoss of information

Solution Approach 1:

The patent applies partial obfuscation rather than complete anonymization. By preserving the percentile range information (which indicates relative performance positioning) while obscuring exact values, the system provides sufficient information for developers to understand their performance context without revealing sensitive granular data. This partial action approach balances privacy protection with information utility

Inventive Principle:

Principle #16Partial or excessive action

Data Source

PatentUS12561221B2Techniques for managing performance metrics associated with software applications

Publication Date: 2026.02.24 APPLE INC

AI summary

Disclosed herein are techniques for providing comparative performance metrics to software application developers. One technique includes the steps of (1) obtaining respective performance metrics for a plurality of software applications; (2) receiving a request to display, for a particular software application of the plurality of software applications, percentile information associated with the respective performance metric; (3) generating percentile performance metrics based on at least some of the respective performance metrics; (4) identifying, based on the percentile performance metrics, a percentile range into which the respective performance metric; and (5) outputting a user interface that includes: (i) a first visual indication of the respective performance metric, and (ii) a second visual indication of the percentile range into which the respective performance metric falls, where the second visual indication obfuscates a point at which the respective performance metric falls within the percentile range.