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Making sense of low-level usage data to understand user activities

Empirical studies of user activity, based on data collected from the systems with which users interact, present technical challenges related to the transformation of data streams to a form suitable for analysis. In this paper we discuss the particular challenges confronted during a study of user interruption behaviour based on low-level "keystroke" data and the ways in which these challenges were addressed. We also report on a method of data cleaning and analytical preparation that was developed and consider its effectiveness and potential applicability for similar studies.