GUI information-based interaction logging and visualization for asynchronous usability testing

Abstract

Asynchronous usability testing is efficient and promising usability testing methodology. However, evaluators are required to dedicate a considerable amount of effort for identifying usability problems in asynchronous testing. Evaluators cannot observe user interactions directly; only the collected data is available to them for identifying the usability problems. To reduce the amount of effort required, this paper presents a framework and tool for interaction visualization. This framework tracing user interactions based on meaningful GUI changes. The collected interaction log is visualized in a way that is similar to the visualization of traversed path used in web domains. Using our approach, the evaluator shall be able to understand user behavior more easily. In addition, we designed a black-box-based interaction logging for minimizing the implementation costs. Our tool especially helpful when testing has a large number of interaction data to analyze. To evaluate the proposed framework and tool, user interaction data were collected, and the results were evaluated by mobile application experts. The evaluation results demonstrate that the user interaction data traced by the proposed framework accurately reflect the user interactions and that the visualization results are valid. (C) 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.