A contribution towards the measurement of user behavior (abstract only)
Helmut Wilke · ACM SIGSOC Bulletin · 1981
A prerequisite for the design of better systems - in terms of human interface- is knowledge of its users, their problems and behavior. Within the context of a larger project comparing several large statistical program packages, attempts have been made to attack the problem of "knowing the user'. Among traditional methods like surveys, different ways of automatic data collection have been tried and their strengths and weaknesses can be discussed. A particularly powerful tool proved to be a logfile which is automatically updated each time certain software is used. It contains individual level data about size of job and data set, control cards and -statistical procedures used, types of errors and more. This gives valuable insights about:--the structure of the user community.--styles of package use,--weak points of packages.In my paper I will discuss some general problems of recording and analyzing user information, and will present data fre~ the logfile described. This should he considered as an example in the methodological discussion as well as a substantive contribution to the analysis of SPSS-use and -users.