Authors

Danilov N.

Degree	Master of Applied Informatics, Postgraduate Student, Yuri Gagarin State Technical University of Saratov
E-mail	Nikita_Danilov@outlook.com
Location	Saratov
Articles	Constructing a heat map based on the point data of the application user’s activity Increasing complexity of software products also increases the demands on their usability. The article focuses on the software product’s usability evaluation based on the user’s activity data. There are different types of user’s activity data and visualization methods for them, the choice of which depends on the data composition and specificity. One of the most popular is a point data, such as mouse clicks and movements. The commonly used visualization method for point data is a heat map — graphical representation of data where the individual values contained in a matrix are represented as colors. Authors suggest using the heat map as a mathematical model of the user’s activity, what allows formalizing the user’s interaction with the software interface. However, there are no formal methods, described in scientific sources, for constructing heat maps based on the point data of the user’s activity. Authors propose the formal method for constructing such kind of heat maps. The proposed method allows constructing heat map taking into account data density and expert-defined parameters to achieve the desired clarity of visualization. In addition, described method was implemented in free software. Read more...