Logging and analyzing long-term mobile user behavior

Abstract

With the rapid evolution of mobile devices, the usage patterns of applications on these devices also change over time. Recently, the topic of how user behavior and usage patterns of applications has adapted to new mobile devices such as smartphones has attracted much attention. This work presents an experimental platform that can log and analyze all user operations on a smartphone used in a real-life context over long periods of time. The collected data are transmitted to a server periodically whenever an Internet connection is available. Analytic tools such as charting, log query, and real-time log pattern analysis have also been developed to facilitate the study of user behavior. This paper illustrates the functionalities of the proposed platform through several examples and a sample case study.