Web LOG File Information Analysis and Visualization Inside Organizations

Abstract

In the context of this work, organizations can be understood as organic systems composed of people, processes and procedures. The intranets are incorporated in organizations to support their mission and guarantee effective process delivery within an efficient framework. These technological platforms, with a web driven user front-end, are able to log several user interaction details. The main goal of this paper is to report how the analysis and visualization of interaction patterns inside an organization's internal web based system can be achieved, as mentioned by [Eick01] in a more general context and by [Healey01] in a specific e-commerce scenario. In order to validate the research on conceptual models, information architecture and several visualization methods, a prototype is being developed, tested and permanently upgraded. At this stage of iterative development, the prototype can be considered as an experimental research platform [Nunes03], capable of integrating and testing specific visualization schemes [Mealha04] and visual correlation procedures. Besides this, the prototype incorporates features that can visually support answers for questions, such as: i How is the site used? ii Who is using the site? iii What are the site areas / sectors / pages of interest? iv What statistical information can be obtained from the log files? v What are the problematic areas? vi Which usability problems can be identified? Some of the methodological stages, inherent to our research, will be described and exemplified in this paper, specifically, the conceptual model of the prototyped system, overall prototype design and unified user interface, and visual inspection methods/schemes. Examples will be presented as prototype screenshot images depicting visual inspection settings and results.