Users of computing applications often encounter various sorts of problems and inconsistencies while using the applications. Designing computer software that will minimize user problems requires knowledge as to how the user is making use of the application and the tasks that are trying to be accomplished by use of the applications. The design process typically includes iterative design and user testing of those designs in order to identify where users have problems so that design flaws can be accurately addressed and fixed. A thorough knowledge of problems that users encounter in existing products is also critical if design mistakes are to be avoided for future versions of those applications.
Understanding what is important to users of a particular software application product is a challenge for software application developers. Typically, enhancements to a product release are based on feedback from surveys, forums or from user design center sessions in which participants are given a set of tasks to accomplish while using the application. Some problems inherent in these methods, however, include the inability of users to articulate their needs, the artificiality of surveys produces feedback which is not meaningful, and users of forums are typically technical fans of the product so that the results may be of little practical use to the product developers.
Most would agree that the best way to get feedback is by observing what a user does throughout actual use sessions with the product, that is by watching the user as the user works through the application in the setting for which it was intended. The problem is to provide a meaningful solution for gathering real user feedback in real time on a regular basis, and providing this data back to the program developer where it can be analyzed and used in enhancing and improving the application. One effective way of gathering such information about user interaction with the application is through code instrumentation. The term “instrumentation” is understood to mean the incorporation of statements or routines in an application to cause outputs to be provided when the application is running on a computer system thereby illustrating the interaction of the end user with the application.
Currently, it is known that instrumenting an application involves going into the application and adding appropriate program code at every point in the application where useful user data can be gathered, and then recompiling the application. It has been found that this “compile-time” method of instrumentation is not really effective for a number of reasons. It takes many points of instrumentation to get sufficient and meaningful overall coverage of user interaction with the application. At the particular code level, it is difficult to be judicious in selecting code points for instrumentation. A large number of instrumentation points can negatively affect the application's performance. The amount of data produced depends entirely on where the user is spending time in working with the application. In some instances, the data can be large and therefore cumbersome to analyze, and at other times, it may be sparse and therefore of very little practical use.
In view of the above, a need exists in the art for enhanced run-time instrumentation techniques for instrumenting one or more program applications to eliminate the aforementioned difficulties inherent with known compile-time methods of instrumentation.