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12.3 Activity-logging software 345

adults with disabilities as they completed everyday computer tasks, in the hopes
of building tools that might adapt to better suit the needs of these users (Hurst
et al., 2013).
Mobile devices present additional possibilities for activity tracking, providing
not only the opportunity to record which keys and controls were activated and
when, but also detailed information regarding users’ geographic location. HCI
researchers have used logs of user location to predict short-term motion of in-
dividuals in crowds in a city environment (Fan et al., 2015), to infer movement
characteristics associated with depression (Canzian and Musolesi, 2015), and un-
doubtedly for countless other interesting questions. See Chapter 14 for further
discussion of the possible uses of mobile and ubiquitous computing for tracking
user activity.

12.3.3 INTERACTION RECORDING TOOLS
Think-aloud studies and contextual inquiries involving direct observation and re-
cording of user activities can be invaluable means of identifying and understanding
usability problems, but they can also be a challenge to interpret. Recording what
goes on as a user executes a series of actions to complete a complex task can be time
consuming and error-prone, and subsequent discussions of the activity details and
motivating context can be hard to capture. Similarly, although studies of log files
can indicate what happened and when, the why of the observed interactions is often
harder to gauge.
Screen capture and audio recording tools can provide invaluable assistance in
these situations. Full-screen video with mouse pointers and accompanying audio
can provide rich detail suitable for detailed analysis down to the mouse click.
Audio can capture user comments vital for interpreting outcomes of think-aloud
studies or other usability inquiries. Screen capture can also be very useful for ex-
ploring the use of computational tools as work as being conducted, as unobtrusive
recording might capture interactions with greater realism than possible in lab set-
tings. This approach has been used to study contexts including work in law offices
(Cangiano and Hollan, 2009) and the use of electronic medical records during
patient visits with physicians (see the “LAB-IN-A-BOX” sidebar, Chapter 13).
Recording tools generally come in one of two flavors. Commodity tools
adopted for research provide a simple and cost-effective, yet limited solution.
Screen recorders generally used to capture demonstrations will capture some or
all of the screen, along with audio, providing a video in a standard format such
as MP4. Some real-time web conferencing services include similar recording
facilities, providing an excellent option for studies involving users in remote
locations.
For more functionality at a likely higher cost, many researchers choose to use
dedicated usability study software packages. These tools augment basic screen and
audio capture with linked and integrated loggers for mouse and keyboard action,
often with additional data streams including webcam images of the users at work.