To date, information about electronic book (ebook) usage has been
sought explicitly through interviews, questionnaires, think-aloud
sessions and measurements of task success. Logs, commonly used
in tracking user behaviour on the web, present a new possibility:
gathering data about users implicitly. Users can be "tracked"
behaving naturally and without interruption, giving rise to new
and valuable forms of feedback; such data could be used in a variety
of ways, including informing good design and developing personalisation
services. This project will explore the potential of this non-invasive
technique for observing user behaviour with ebooks, assessing
its effectiveness as an evaluation method.
Aims
and Objectives
The project aims to:
Determine
what sort of information can be gathered from logging and tracking
software about ebook use, and the value of this information.
Assess
the costs and benefits of using logs as an ebook evaluation
tool.
Specifically,
its objectives are to:
Survey
logging and tracking software and its current applications.
Use
logging software to implicitly study user interactions with
a free web book.
Compare
and combine the results with data from other evaluation methods,
expanding the EBONI Project's ebook evaluation methodology.
Record
the costs involved in using logs as an evaluation tool.
Disseminate
this information to the appropriate communities.
Contact
e::
Department of Computer & Information Sciences University of Strathclyde Livingstone Tower 26 Richmond Street
Glasgow, G1 1XH