Applying aspect oriented programming in usability engineering processes: On the example of tracking usage information for remote usability testing

Usability Engineering can be seen as a crosscutting concern within the software development process. Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) on the other hand is a technology to support separation of concerns in software engineering. Therefore it stands to reason to support usability engineering by applying a technology designed to handle distinct concerns in one single application. Remote usability testing has been proven to deliver good results and AOP is the technology that can be used to streamline the process of testing various software products without mixing concerns by separating the generation of test data from program execution. In this paper we present a sample application, discuss our practical experiences with this approach, and provide recommendations for further development.