An improved method of studying user-system interaction by combining transaction log analysis and protocol analysis

Abstract

The paper reports a novel approach to studying user-system interaction that captures a complete record of the searcher's actions, the system responses and synchronised talk-aloud comments from the searcher. The data is recorded unobtrusively and is available for later analysis. The approach is set in context by a discussion of transaction logging and protocol analysis and examples of the search logging in operation are presented

Keywords

• transaction logging
• end user studies
• methodology
• protocol analysis
• user system interaction