How to collect and then extract user's behavior patterns

Question

I have some SDI windows forms application. This application has main form, a huge of module forms. At the same time I can view one module form and many it's sub modal forms. So, every module form is responsible for some functionality. Users are noticed that they switch between some module forms many times per day. I have to collect this information and extract a common user's behavior. Are there any methods, tricks to get this information instead of manual investigation (shadowing)?

I can write any code to implement this.

ADDED:

I have decided to add some proxies to start logging their actions:

• list view: select item
• grid view: select item, other actions (filter, sort, edit)
• button: action (add, edit, reorder, import, export, reset, save, undo, exit...)
• look up text box: input text (with search button click)

I have decided to collect these data: user, location, action source, action base type, on date, action data

User1 | form1 | button1 | button action | 10/28/2010 10:00 | Edit

User1 | form1 | list1 | list view select action | 10/28/2010 10:03 | Items

User1 | form2 | grid1 | grid view select action | 10/28/2010 10:03 | 100654

Have I forgotten something?

Answer 1

We're looking into implementing something similar in an app that we're developing, though for different purposes (we want to be able to "replay" the user's actions for testing and robustness purposes). In our situation, we are enhancing the undo/redo mechanism in the software to make it save scripts of the user's actions.

If you don't have an undo ability, they you will need some sort of journaling, but it seems to me that this becomes more of a programming question than a UI one, no?

Answer 2

I have a bad idea, but I'll share it anyway as it might trigger better ones :)

If you were implementing a website, I'd say you could use Google Analytics or other software that gives you insight about your user actions (for example ClickTale).

Since I understand it's a desktop application, perhaps you could emulate using such web services, by associating certain modules and forms with specific urls.

Naturally you have to think about performance, letting your users know about the logging, etc., but if you can make it work, you might get the tools such services provide very easily.

What do you think?

Answer 3

If there are certain UI widgets you are interested in, such as dialogs, forms, etc, could you not just add some logging to their various events? For example, if the user switches from one tab to another tab frequently, and you want to measure this, you could count the number of times the tabs are hidden or shown. Similarly you could track button clicks, keyboard shortcut use, etc.