Odeyemi Olukayode June 13, 2005 Name of Paper WebQuilt : A proxy-based Approach to Remote Web Usability Testing by J. Hong, J Heer, S Waterson, J.Landay Description This paper describes the architecture and implementation of a tool for logging, visualizing and analyzing data collected during usability testing of a website. The resulting tool was able to overcome several of the limitations that existing tools used for web usability testing had. The primary purpose for having a tool like this is to provide web user interface designers a means to gain insight into how users of a web site actually use the website. This is much needed information as it is difficult to design any computer program user interface, much less a web user interface, which has more limitations. This information can guide a design to design a more effective interface. The success of a web site highly depends on its usability. Usability involves two parts. 1) What is a user trying to accomplish and 2) What block the user from completing a task to reach the accomplishment. This tool is concerned with the second part. Different approaches to usability testing have been considered before. This varies from installing code on client to keep track of various pieces of information from keystrokes to pages request, to server side tracking of web pages request by clients via log analysis to the manual approach of observing user while they use the site. This tool uses a "man in the middle" approach to capture the data needed. The man-in-the-middle approach, in this case, the use of a proxy, is passive to system (the browser - server transactions) thus can be easily adopted for use. It also takes care many of the shortfalls the traditional methods of usability testing have. For example, the manual process of observing real users while they use the site would be very expensive. Since the tool is right between the server
and client, the the observer needs to only be at one place. Another example is the fact that current web server logs do not collect enough information for web site usability analysis. With the proxy approach all pages request and pages go thru the proxy, thus all information needed could be tracked. And finally, the cost of installing code on each client in order to "track click" could be come expensive as well. It could also discourage user from using the site since the user would have to install something else. And in some instance sending the data gathers by the code to a central location could be difficult. Once again, with the proxy approach, the user and the user's system/client is free to operate as-is. Thus this tool, "WebQuilt" provides the following... 1. A way of logging web usage that is fast and easy to deploy on any web site (proxy) 2. A way of logging that is compatible with a range of operating systems and web browsers (proxy) 3. Tools for analyzing and visualizing the captured data (aggregation system) And since the tool is passive in nature, it could be easily used as part of an iterative approach fo...