Event Patterns as Indicators of Usability Problems

Event logs collected automatically contain a wealth of information about the usability of an application's user interface. Manual analysis of the event logs to identify usability problems is, however, a time consuming process. There are certain generic event patterns that can be associated with usability problems and can act as indicators of usability problems. These patterns can be automatically detected in event logs. We survey the event pattern indicators that have been identified and reported earlier in the literature. We identify new event patterns that get generated when users face usability problems during web browsing. We report on an experimental study that establishes the connection between these patterns and usability problems. The ultimate goal of this research is to develop techniques that can discover these patterns in event logs and reduce the time and cost of usability evaluation of the user interface.