Remote Usability Evaluation of Web Applications through Browser Logs and Task Models

The dissemination of Web applications is enormous and still growing. The great penetration of Web sites raises a number of challenges for usability evaluators. Video-based analysis can be rather expensive and may provide limited results. In this paper, we discuss what information can be provided by automatic tools able to process the information contained in browser logs and task models. To this end, we present a tool for comparing log files of user behaviour with the task model representing the actual Web site design in order to identify where users interactions deviate from those envisioned by the system design.