The videotape record of a user-system interaction can be very valuable in locating usability problems. However, the analysis of the videotape record is often unstructured, non-quantitative, and time-consuming. The Video Analysis Method (VAM) provides a method to structure this data and derive measures of usability. A grammar integrates the videotape data with transaction log information and segments of the program code into a single representation of the interaction. Various usability metrics can then be derived from this representation. In addition, the use of the transaction log to edit usability problems from the videotape before the application of the grammar reduces the total analysis time.
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