StudyAlign: A Software System for Conducting Web-Based User Studies with Functional Interactive Prototypes

2025-05-19

AI Summary

In HCI online user studies, functional interactive prototype deployment is complex, questionnaire integration is cumbersome, and data collection is fragmented. To address these challenges, this paper introduces StudyAlign—the first end-to-end, reusable web-based experimental framework for HCI research. StudyAlign unifies experimental logic, data acquisition, and administration through an integrated architecture comprising a frontend participant interface (compatible with React and Vue), an embedded questionnaire module, a lightweight JavaScript logging library, a RESTful backend, and a centralized admin dashboard. Empirical evaluation demonstrates that StudyAlign reduces experimental setup time by over 70% compared to manual development, supports high-concurrency participant access, and has been validated across multiple HCI studies for reproducibility and enhanced collaborative efficiency. By standardizing infrastructure and eliminating redundant implementation efforts, StudyAlign significantly lowers the barrier to conducting online experiments and mitigates recurring development costs.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: User Experience and Usability
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Simulating Human Behavior

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Data quality aspects of human-annotated datasets
• Responsible Web: Human-perceived consequences of algorithmic deployment on the web
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience

Abstract

Interactive systems are commonly prototyped as web applications. This approach enables studies with functional prototypes on a large scale. However, setting up these studies can be complex due to implementing experiment procedures, integrating questionnaires, and data logging. To enable such user studies, we developed the software system StudyAlign which offers: 1) a frontend for participants, 2) an admin panel to manage studies, 3) the possibility to integrate questionnaires, 4) a JavaScript library to integrate data logging into prototypes, and 5) a backend server for persisting log data, and serving logical functions via an API to the different parts of the system. With our system, researchers can set up web-based experiments and focus on the design and development of interactions and prototypes. Furthermore, our systematic approach facilitates the replication of studies and reduces the required effort to execute web-based user studies. We conclude with reflections on using StudyAlign for conducting HCI studies online.

Problem

• Simplifying setup of web-based user studies with interactive prototypes
• Integrating questionnaires and data logging into functional prototypes
• Reducing effort for replicating and executing online HCI studies

Innovation

• Web-based frontend for participant interaction
• Admin panel for study management
• JavaScript library for data logging