An Evaluation of a Tool for Capturing User Interaction with Web Systems

Tamires Priscila da Costa; Luciano Tadeu Esteves Pansanato; Adriano Rivolli

doi:10.20906/CPS/SICITE2015-0089

Resumo

Data on user interaction that can be stored in the server are not enough to extract detailed information on the real use of web systems. The Web Application Usage Tracking Tool, WAUTT, is used to capture detailed information at the level of page elements and events associated to user interaction. WAUTT uses JavaScript for capturing user interaction in the client and registering the data in a server for further analysis. This work presents an evaluation of WAUTT to investigate its use for capturing user interaction in a usability test of a web system called Dreds used to creating stories with characters and speeches. The usability test was carried out by an evaluator and five tasks were proposed to 10 students from Computer Science courses: create a story; include a new character; change the story, exchange characters and their speeches; exclude speeches and characters; format the text of speeches. Users were informed of the objectives, procedures and approximate duration of the usability test, types of data to be captured and how they would be analyzed. Key press was responsible for the largest number of events, corresponding to 54.6% of the total. Next, the main events were related to the mouse, which together totalized 42.3%, with 13.3% of mouse move corresponds and 29% of events related to the click (mouse up/down, click and double click). Finally, all the other events together did not totalized 3.1%. Many questions can be explored from the data captured, for example: the interface does not have any support for a double click, but this event was detected; occurrences of key press for the realization of tasks four and five were not expected, but the analysis showed that users made small adjustments in the speeches. In conclusion, analysis and observation possibilities are great considering the data captured by WAUTT. The analysis and consistency of data captured in relation to the observed user interaction shows that the support provided by the WAUTT is reliable.

Palavras-chave: Usability Evaluation; User Interaction Logging; Log File Analysis; User Testing; Web System