This is a bit off topic, but why shouldn’t scholars be interested in tracking how they use their mouse and keyboard? I found this little program called Application usage statistics (or UsageStats) which does exactly that. Its called application usage statistics because it not only tracks your overall usage but also by application and how much you spent in each application. Its opensource and quite new, so it’s not perfect yet, but it works quite well and it’s fascinating how many indicators it tracks (it even tells you your average typing speed and your Mouse/Keyboard ratio as well which keys you used how often and much, much more.
Some of these statistics are more fun than useful for anything in particular, but most of them can become meaningful when you start comparing, either your own data over time, or with others.
Given that statistics are available on a per application basis, you could, for example, compare, say, your mouse to keyboard ratio for a particular program with those of your colleagues and identify the person who is most efficient in using keyboard shortcuts for that program perhaps that person will then share those shortcuts. Or if that person is not even aware of why their ratio is different to that of other users, you can dig more deeply into the usage stats and see how they are using the program differently. Well, maybe my ad hoc example is not so appealing, but you get the idea.
For intra-personal comparison over time, it would be great if someone could come up with a visualization tool similar to Gapminder. But hardcore quantified self apologists will love even the numbers as as they are. 😉
One of the major caveats with Application usage statistics is that it currently only records one monitor. So if you are using two monitors with extended desktop, you will not get the graphical mapping of your mouse movements for the second monitor (clicks and keyboard strokes are being counted, though). If you want to encourage developers to implement multi-monitor support, please vote for the respective issue on CodePlex, where the project is hosted.
Another little quibble is that the program doesn’t install itself into the windows start menu by itself so that you have to navigate to the program files folder, right-click “UsageStats.exe” and select “Pin to Start Menu”.
Also, the program does not open from the tray icon by left-click. You need to right-click and select “Open”.
By the way: there are a couple of similar programs, but none of them comes close to what Application Usage Statistics does. You can trust me on that. But if you have time to waste, then go ahead and check out Mousetron and IOGraphica. Especially the latter is actually quite nice, but in the end UsageStats just combines the functions of the two and goes much much further.
software for scholars 