Tracking User Actions for the Web-Based Front End of ExplorViz
Maria Kosche · 2013
User tracking is a useful method for locating usability problems. The topic of this thesis is the tracking of user actions in the web-based front end of ExplorViz, a visualisation tool for software landscapes. It is written with the Google Web Toolkit and its architecture is the client-server model. Evaluated tools such as Google Analytics and Piwik require the usage of JavaScript and are therefore not directly compatible with GWT. Evaluated instrumentation frameworks such as Tiny AOP and GIN lack actuality and are not compatible with current versions of GWT. To develop a tracking method for ExplorViz a simple but working method was used. Tracking functions were integrated directly into the code and the GWT remote procedure call technique was used for passing tracking records from the client to the server. The tracking records are stored in a CSV formatted file for further processing. The evaluation shows that the developed tracking method covers all requirements. Future work includes the auto-generated visualisation of the tracking records and the development of an instrumentation framework for GWT.