QButterfly: Lightweight Survey Extension for Online User Interaction Studies for Non-Tech-Savvy Researchers

TL;DR

QButterfly is an open-source toolkit that simplifies conducting online user interaction studies for non-technical researchers by extending popular survey platforms with minimal programming requirements.

Contribution

It introduces a lightweight, user-friendly extension for Qualtrics and LimeSurvey, enabling easy setup and analysis of online interaction studies without programming expertise.

Findings

Validated in laboratory and field settings

Facilitates broader access for non-tech researchers

Potential to expand online user interaction research

Abstract

We provide a user-friendly, flexible, and lightweight open-source HCI toolkit (github.com/QButterfly) that allows non-tech-savvy researchers to conduct online user interaction studies using the widespread Qualtrics and LimeSurvey platforms. These platforms already provide rich functionality (e.g., for experiments or usability tests) and therefore lend themselves to an extension to display stimulus web pages and record clickstreams. The toolkit consists of a survey template with embedded JavaScript, a JavaScript library embedded in the HTML web pages, and scripts to analyze the collected data. No special programming skills are required to set up a study or match survey data and user interaction data after data collection. We empirically validated the software in a laboratory and a field study. We conclude that this extension, even in its preliminary version, has the potential to make online user interaction studies (e.g., with crowdsourced participants) accessible to a broader range of researchers.