A Design, Tests and Considerations for Improving Keystroke and Mouse Loggers

We start by reviewing several logging tools. We then report improvements to a keystroke logger we have developed for the Mac and PC, Recording User Input (RUI). These improvements include changes to its interface, increased accuracy and extensions to its logging ability. RUI runs in the background recording user behavior with timestamps and mouse location data across all applications—thus avoiding problems associated with video logs and instrumenting individual applications. We provide a summary and comparison of tests for loggers and present procedures for validating logger timing that quantifies timing accuracy using an external clock. We demonstrate these tests on RUI and three other applications (Morae, Camtasia and AppMonitor). We conclude by providing some general specifications and considerations for creating, testing, evaluating and using keystroke and mouse loggers with respect to different experimental questions and tasks.