Introduction to the EUSES Web Macro Scenario Corpus Allen Cypher, Sebastian Elbaum, Andhy Koesnandar, Brad Myers, Christopher Scaffidi

2 What I am going to talk about Talk outline What we are doing and why What scenarios are like What we have found so far What we hope you will contribute Lots of time for discussion

3 What we are doing, and why What is a “web macro scenario corpus”? We identified real-world repetitive tasks that end users perform in a browser. We imagined automating these in a web macro tool: –Demonstrate an example of the task to a recorder –The tool creates a macro to represent the task steps –Replay the macro as needed later We collected 10 such tasks, described them as scenarios, and analyzed what kinds of features a tool would need to provide in order to automate these tasks.

4 What we are doing, and why What are the benefits of the corpus? Illustrates the wide range of potential applications for web macros Enables researchers to test their tools with tasks from the real world (“benchmark”) Provides a seed that can grow into a larger corpus as other researchers contribute additional scenarios These require tasks that EUs would benefit from automating.

5 What scenarios are like Where did we get scenarios from? Contextual inquiry – 3 scenarios –E.g.: looking up staff in online directory Our own experiences – 2 scenarios –E.g.: tracking packages shipped via DHL Co-workers – 2 scenarios –E.g.: ordering products on a corporate intranet shop Online sources – 3 scenarios –E.g.: downloading stock statistics/data

6 What scenarios are like What is in a scenario? * Title:Pithy name to make it easy to refer to the scenario * Typical User:Tells what type of person is likely to perform the task * Overview:Context and forces that would prompt a user to do the task * Starting Conditions:Pre-conditions that hold true before the scenario * Result:Post-conditions that should hold true after the scenario * Actions:Steps that the user performs (maybe with a tool) Action Details:Screenshots, snippets of HTML, or other clarifying information Variations:Discusses likely scenarios that are tweaks of the main scenario Macro Maintenance:Examines how scenario evolution prompting macro changes * Scenario Source:Summarizes empirical data that generated this scenario

7 What scenarios are like Walk through an example scenario

8 What we have found so far What requirements for web macro tools have we uncovered? Triggering macros On-demand execution Scheduled execution Event-based triggers Subroutines Finding objects on web pages Adapting to changing page layout Adapting to changing form fields Adapting to changing URLs Reading/writing data Text snippets Tabular information Web form widgets HTML generation Other browser APIs Spreadsheets and other files Parameters containing user input Transforming data Reformat to equivalent value Extraction of values’ parts Combination of values Executing control structures Looping operations Conditional operations Recovering from failure Partial restarts Exception handlers Supporting macro maintenance User-understandable representation Editable macros Features for debugging Maintenance at runtime

9 What we hope you will contribute How can you contribute? We are currently wrapping up a technical report with version 1.0 of the scenario corpus (by end of Nov.?) –You can give us suggestions on the technical report. We will wikify the corpus (by end of Dec.?) –You can post new scenarios & tool requirements. We will turn sections of the technical report into a VL/HCC paper (by Mar. 2007) –You can suggest things you’d like to see in the paper.