This thesis provides insight into long-term factors of user behaviour with a Web site or application using low-level interaction events (such as mouse movement, and scroll action) as a proxy. Current laboratory studies employ scenarios where confounding variables can be controlled. Unfortunately, these scenarios are not naturalistic or ecologically valid. Existing remote alternatives fail to provide either the required granularity or the necessary naturalistic aspect. Without appropriate longitudinal approaches, the effects of long-term factors can only be analysed via cross-sectional studies, ignoring within-subject variability. Using a naturalistic remote interaction data capturing tool represents a key improvement and supports the analysis of longitudinal user interaction in the wild. Naturalistic low-level fine-grained Web interaction data (from URLs visited, to keystrokes and mouse movements) has been captured in the wild from publicly available working live sites for over 16 months. Different combinations of low-level indicators are characterised as micro behaviours to enable the analysis of interaction captured for extended periods of time. The extraction of micro behaviours provides an extensible technique to obtain meaning from long-term low-level interaction data. 18 thousand recurring users have been extracted and 53 million events have been analysed. A relation of users' interaction time with the site and their degree of familiarity has been found via a remote survey. This relation enables the use of users' active time with the site as a proxy for their degree of familiarity. Analysing the evolution of extracted micro behaviours enables an understanding of how users' interaction behaviour changes over time. The results demonstrate that monitoring micro behaviours offers a simple and easily extensible post hoc approach to understand how Web-based behaviour changes over time. Results of the analysis have identified key aspects from micro behaviours that are strongly correlated with users' degree of familiarity. In the case of users scrolling continuously for short periods of time, it has been found that the speed of the scroll increased as users' become more familiar with the Web site. Users have also been found to spend more time on the Web site without interacting with the mouse. Understanding long-term interaction factors such as familiarity supports the design of interfaces that accommodate users' interaction evolution. Combining found key aspects enables a prediction of a user's degree of familiarity without the need for continuous observation. The presented approach also allows for the validation of hypothesis on longitudinal user interaction behaviour factors.

The thesis proposes that Strategic Planning for Information Systems (SPIS) has become ineffective through a tendency to focus on the information technologies involved. The thesis argues that the dominant rational, reductionist epistemology of SPIS methods, tools and techniques limits the effectiveness of SPIS through methodological impoverishment. The thesis proposes that a humanistic, sociotechnical perspective of SPIS accommodates the use of complementary tools and techniques that improve the process. This thesis advances a new Framework to improve the process of SPIS based on the propositions; first that the lack of sufficient knowledge of both the internal and external environment is a root cause of many of these insufficiencies, and second that this knowledge is held within the stakeholders of this process. An ernancipatory information systems research programme (Klein and Hirschheim, 1987) is used to advance a framework that overcomes the insufficiency and inadequacy of the process of strategic planning for information systems in organisations that permits information systems to fail. The framework is tested on two organisations and shows that the proposed Framework has significant potential to improve the SPIS process. The case research investigates the role of stakeholders, knowledge, and boundaries in the process of SPIS in order to develop more sufficient methods for the process of SPIS that address the perceived inadequacies in current processes, and thus provide an improved strategic planning process for information systems. Two novel tools are introduced: the Stakeholder Web and the Interaction Matrix. Their evolution is a major contribution of this research. The collection of tools presents a practical research contribution for the SPIS process and as generic (methodological) research tools. A new definition for the term 'stakeholder' is formulated and used to supply clarity in understanding for this study - and would prove useful for the field of IS.

This study seeks to investigate the subtle impact that dynamic design elements in web interfaces have on users, particularly on users' decision-making and engagement. In contrast to most current research efforts, which predominantly address mobile applications, the current study aims to direct the focus on web-based environments to reveal special behavioral responses evoked by dynamic design features. The study adopts a comprehensive mixed-methods approach that encompasses qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques. This includes A/B testing on the prototypes of web interfaces, which provides the base for measuring engagement objectively from users. A very salient point here is that animations increase user retention by 30%, which shows that well-applied dynamic elements can advance the stickiness and interaction users would have with a digital platform. On the other hand, the thesis also mentions the risks related to such design elements, like the ability to cause cognitive overload and distraction in case of non-judicious use of these elements. Through the account of user behavioral analysis in response to various implementations, the research provides useful insights to web designers and developers about how to use animations and transitions judiciously for navigational intuitiveness and responsiveness without hampering web interface usability. The present research also adds to theories for UX and user interface design (UID) by promoting the balanced integration of dynamic design elements. What was brought to the forefront was that research to understand the specific impacts of these elements can lead to more effective digital environments, tailored to foster user engagement that could support efficient processes of decision making. This thesis not only fills the academic gap related to digital interaction but also provides a practical guideline for the improvement of web interface design given user behavior and technology.

Mobile widgets now form a new paradigm of simplified web. Probably, the best experience of the Web is when a user has a widget for every frequently executed task, and can execute it anytime, anywhere on any device. However, the current method of programmatically creating personally relevant mobile widgets for every user does not scale. Creation of these mobile web widgets requires application programming as well as knowledge of web-related protocols. Furthermore, these mobile widgets are also limited to smart phones with data connectivity and such smart phones form just about 15% of the mobile phones in India. How do we make web accessible on devices that most people can afford? How does one create simple relevant tasks for the numerous diverse needs of every person? In this thesis, we attempt to address these issues and propose a new method of web simplification that enables an end-user to create simple single-click widgets for a complex personal task - without any programming. The proposed solution enables even low-end phones to access personal web tasks over SMS and voice. We propose a system that enables end users to create personal widgets via programming-by-browsing. A new concept called Tasklets to represent a user’s personal interaction, and a notion of programming over websites using a Web Virtual Machine are presented. Ensuring correct execution of these end user widgets posed interesting problems in web data mining and required us to investigate new methods to characterize and semantically model browser-based interactions. In particular, an instruction set for programming over web sites, new domain-specific similarity measures using ontologies, algorithms for frequent-pattern mining of web interactions and change detection with a proof of its NP-completeness are presented. A quantitative metric to measure the interaction complexity of web browsing and a method of classifying relational data using semantics hidden in the schema are introduced as well. This new web architecture to enable multi-device access to user's personal tasks over low-end phones was piloted with real users, as a solution named SiteOnMobile, and has received very positive response.