Handbook of Research on Web Log Analysis

Product or company names used in this set are for identification purposes only. Inclusion of the names of the products or companies does not indicate a claim of ownership by IGI Global of the trademark or registered trademark. Summary: " This book reflects on the multifaceted themes of Web use and presents various approaches to log analysis "-Provided by publisher. All work contributed to this book set is original material. The views expressed in this book are those of the authors, but not necessarily of the publisher. If a library purchased a print copy of this publication, please go to http://www.igi-global.com/agreement for information on activating the library's complimentary electronic access to this publication. AbstrAct In this chapter, we describe and discuss a methodological framework that integrates analysis of interaction logs with the conceptual design of the user interaction. It is based on (i) formalizing the func-tionality that is supported by an interactive system and the valid interactions that can take place; (ii) deriving schemas for capturing the interactions in activity logs; (iii) deriving log parsers that reveal the system states and the state transitions that took place during the interaction; and (iv) analyzing the user activities and the system's state transitions in order to describe the user interaction or to test some research hypotheses. This approach is particularly useful for studying user behavior when using highly interactive systems. We present the details of the methodology, and exemplify its use in a mediated retrieval experiment, in which the focus of the study is on studying the information-seeking process and on finding interaction patterns.