Characterizing Large-Scale, Long-Term Use of Applications

April 22, 2010
Michael Terry | University of Waterloo

Identifying patterns and trends in large-scale, long-term application use is critical to ensuring an application meets the needs of its user base. However, there are few published analyses of long-term use of direct manipulation applications. In this talk, I present an analysis of 2 years of usage data from over 200 users of an instrumented version of GIMP. In line with previous work, I show that individuals tend to have relatively small, idiosyncratic command vocabularies. I also demonstrate a new means of inferring higher-level tasks, from logs of command use alone, via use of a recent clustering technique. Finally, I discuss implications for interface design and demo a new version of GIMP we’re building to demonstrate these design implications. This new version of GIMP, Adaptable GIMP, demonstrates new possibilities for social customization and shared community learning.

Speaker Details

Michael Terry is an assistant professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, where he co-directs the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Lab (hci.uwaterloo.ca). His research focuses on developing, deploying, and evaluating new tools to support usability needs in free/open source software development.