Mouse behavioral patterns and keystroke dynamics in End-User Development: What can they tell us about users’ behavioral attributes?

Studying human behavior is of particular interest within the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) as it can provide insight into human performance. Prior HCI research suggests that mouse and keyboard monitoring may provide a more complete picture of user behavior under high cognitive loads like decision making and developing tasks. In this exploratory study we investigate the potential correlation between mouse behavioral patterns or keystroke dynamics and a set of End-User Development (EUD) behavioral attributes. We conduct a field test on 30 end-users interacting with a modern web-based EUD tool for the construction of simple web forms. Our findings reveal the existence of several significant correlations between end-users’ behavioral attributes and mouse pattern metrics or keystroke dynamics during the development process. Mouse pattern metrics like random and straight movements, mouse hovers, etc., can be associated with perceived ease use, perceived usefulness, self-efficacy, willingness to learn or risk-perception. Similarly, some keystroke dynamics like key press speed and down-to-down time can be associated with perceived ease of use or self-efficacy. The findings of this work show a new interesting research direction and may motivate the EUD research community to study further the end-users’ mouse and keyboard behavior in today's web-based EUD systems.