Observing or monitoring users working with an appl

Question

I'm a believer in observing what users are doing with an application. I think that it is the only way to get an accurate picture of what people are doing. However, I don't always want to be sitting with them and peering over their shoulder; apart from the time burden it is a distracting for them and may also change their behaviour.

What I'd really like is a way of observing/recording/monitoring/logging what users are doing in a windows form application.

I'd also like to be able to analyse the actions of 50+ users and gather some stats.

And the observation is like this http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010805.html not like spying on people.

Got any suggestions?

Answer 1

Do you want a log of the actions? Or do you just want to observe?

Perhaps simply DrawToBitmap on a timer? (although this is a bit hit'n'miss; WPF has better tools here...)

Sometimes this isn't evil... we (actually, Steve) did something similar on the finguistics prototype to mimic a teacher's console (for tracking activity etc).