Automatic Operation Logging and Usability Validation
Avi Harel · 1999
The article discusses tools that contribute to the usefulness validation of software products. Automatic operation logging of software product is used for market research, to measure the product utility and for usability validation. It is used in two ways. First, for attaining usability measures, based on statistics of the product operation. Second, for enabling backtracking of the sequence of user actions of interest. Statistics about usage rates are useful for product positioning, to learn which features are utilized frequently and which are not. Control level statistics of time measurements are useful for measuring the user productivity, for identifying controls that users cannot find easily, and for identifying and rectifying controls that, when activated, result in confusing system response. Task level time measurements are derived automatically from task procedures, expressed as “directed graphs ” of control activations. Backtracking is required for exploring user errors that the software product fails to forgive. More than half of the human computer interaction time is wasted on the process of error detection and correction. Backtracking is required to identify unintentional user errors that the product does not forgive and to identify mode errors. Backtracking is most useful for