[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: kdenonbeta/usagemonitor
From:       Richard Moore <rich () xmelegance ! org>
Date:       2004-03-12 23:21:27
Message-ID: 200403122321.27876.rich () xmelegance ! org
[Download RAW message or body]

Here is the readme for the new improved version:

Introduction
============

One thing that recent dicussions about usability have highlighted is how much 
our decisions are currently based on personal opinions rather than hard 
facts. Aaron has recently been trying to address this by asking people how 
much they use the various buttons in the konqueror toolbar, but this is both 
labour intensive and inaccurate. So, I've written the 'Usage Monitor' plugin.

Description
===========

The Usage Monitor is a KParts plugin that records a log message whenever a 
KAction is fired. The log simply notes the action that was activated and how 
it was done - eg. was it via the toolbar, a menu or a keyboard shortcut. By 
analysing this log it is possible to measure which parts of an applications 
GUI are being used, and which are not. If a reasonable users can provide 
sample data using this tool, then we can build up an acurate picture of 
things we could previously on guess at.

The plugin itself is tiny at around 150 lines of code, and works with any 
application that supports KPart plugins (which covers most KDE apps these 
days). No modifications are needed to the application itself and you don't 
need to tweak the monitor for your app either. The code is a good example of 
the power of the XMLGUI framework as it shows how easy it makes creating 
tools that can apply throughout KDE. In this case, it even lets you track the 
use of actions provided by plugins and embeded kparts as well as the main 
application.

Here is a sample log recorded from Konqueror:

"reload","toolbutton_reload","KToolBarButton" 
"home","toolbutton_home","KToolBarButton" "back","unnamed","KToolBarButton" 
"newtab","unnamed","QSignal" "quit","unnamed","KAccelPrivate"

As you can see, I was driving the app mainly through the toolbar. The newtab 
action was fired from the menubar, and I quit using the keyboard shortcut. 
The log is recorded in CSV format to make it easy to import into a 
spreadsheet etc. for analysis. In order to get decent use of these logs, they 
would obviously need to be recorded over a longer period of time but at least 
now we have a tool with which this can be done!

Usage
=====

Using the tool is easy - run konqueror from the directory in which you want 
the log to be placed, and when you're ready to start logging things activate 
the monitor using the menu option in the Tools menu. The log file will be 
created with the name 'usage_appname' and will be appended to rather than 
over-written by multiple invocations. That's all there is to it.

I've now added a useful script for launching the monitor against a specific 
application. It creates the magic needed for activating the plugin against 
the app for you, then cleans up afterwards. It is as easy as:

	kusage kpdf

The log file created by this example is 'usage_kpdf' in the current directory.

Rich.
rich@kde.org


_______________________________________________
kde-usability mailing list
kde-usability@kde.org
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability
[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]